Siir 


W'' 


CRITICAL  KIT-KATS. 


CRITICAL    KIT-KATS 


BY 


EDMUND    GOSSE 

AUTHOR   OF   "gossip    IN    A    LIBRARY,"    "QUESTIONS 
AT  ISSUE,"    ETC. 


NEW    YORK 

DODD,    MEAD   AND   COMPANY 

1903 


9^^  ^ 

c 


©rlffcatfon 
7o   THOMAS   HARDY 

My  Bear  Hardt^ 

Tou  will  recollect,  I  think — for  we  have 
often  laughed  over  the  little  incident — how^  many 
years  ago,  you  and  I,  having  lost  our  way  in  the  leafy 
mazes  of  the  borough  of  Bridport,  asked  a  grave 
young  man  our  road  to  the  railway-station.  Not 
content  with  misdirecting  us,  the  scoundrel  must 
needs  officiously  conduct  us  up  terraced  paths,  and 
between  walls  clustered  with  creepers,  until  he  had 
seen  us  fairly  started  on  the  highway  that  led  out  of 
the  opposite  end  of  the  town.  How  angry  we  were 
when  we  found  out  that  we  had  been  duped,  and 
how  astonished  I  I  asked  you,  bitterly,  if  this  was 
the  vaunted  courtesy  of  your  Wessex  yokel.  As  we 
kicked  our  heels  at  last,  much  too  late  for  the  train, 
in   the    blank    waiting-room,   we  speculated  on  the 


Dedication 


psychology  of  the  thing.  Was  Bridport,  above  all 
other  towns,  the  abode  of  inhospitable  crime,  or  was 
the  young  man  an  outlaw,  fiy^^g  f^om  justice,  and 
glad  to  revenge  himself  on  the  very  prophet  of  his 
county?  Or,  was  it  not  rather  to  be  believed,  as 
your  kind  heart,  grown  philosophical,  suggested, 
that  the  young  man,  shocking  as  his  advice  had 
proved,  gave  it  in  good  faith,  knowing  no  better? 

At  all  events,  we  two  go  no  more  to  Bridport, 
Perhaps,  as  your  people  say,  '■^Bridport  is  Bridport 
still.''  It  remains  with  us,  at  least,  as  a  symbol 
for  misleading  criticism,  and  that  dark  young  man 
as  the  very  Zoilus  of  his  parish.  In  sending  you 
another  book  of  mine — such  a  poor  return,  at  best, 
for  your  beautiful  sylvan  stories — how  can  I  but 
wonder  whether  my  sign-board  work  may  not  after 
all  be  of  the  Bridport  order  ?  What  if  every  judg- 
ment in  it  but  misleads  and  misdirects  ?  A  terrible 
nightmare,  under  which  my  only  consolation  is  that 
you,  even  if  you  find  me  a  false  guide,  will  extend  to 
me  the  indulgence  which  finally  determined  that  our 
solemn  miscreant,  that  hot  summer  afternoon,  could 
not  have  meant  to  deceive,  but  only  '■'•knew  no  better'' 


Dedication  vii 


Take  the  little  hook,  then,  for  the  sake  of  the  com- 
rade, not  of  the  critic.  Take  it  as  a  landmark  in  that 
friendship,  to  me  inestimably  -precious,  which  has 
now  lasted  more  than  twenty  years,  and  will  continue, 
I  hope  and  think,  unbroken  till  one  or  other  of  us 
can  enter  into  no  further  earthly  relations. 

I  am  alwaySy  my  dear  Hardy, 

Tours  sincerely, 

e-g. 


PREFACE 

IN  an  age  when  studies  multiply,  and  our  shelves  groan 
with  books,  it  is  not  every  interesting  and  original 
figure  to  whom  the  space  of  a  full-length  or  even  a  half- 
length  portrait  can  be  spared.  For  the  low  comfortable 
rooms  where  people  dined  in  the  last  century,  there  was 
invented  the  shorter  and  still  less  obtrusive  picture  called 
a  Kit-Kat,*  and  some  of  our  most  skilful  painters  have 
delighted  in  this  modest  form  of  portraiture,  which 
emphasises  the  head,  yet  does  not  quite  exclude  the  hand 
of  the  sitter.  I  have  ventured  to  borrow  from  the  graphic 
art  this  title  for  my  little  volume,  since  these  are  con- 
densed portraits,  each  less  than  half-length,  and  each 
accommodated  to  suit  limited  leisure  and  a  crowded  space. 
They  are  essays  in  a  class  of  literature  which  it  is 
strange  to  find  somewhat  neglected  in  this  country, 
since,  if  it  can  only  be  executed  with  tolerable  skill,  none 
should  be  more  directly  interesting  and  pleasing.  [_We 
are  familiar  with  pure  criticism  and  with  pure  biography, 
but  what  I  have  here  tried  to  produce  is  a  combination 
*  Or  a  Kit-Cat,  for  both  forms  are  in  use. 


Preface 


of  the  two,  the  life  illustrated  by  the  work,  the  work 
relieved  by  the  life.  Such  criticism  as  is  here  attempted 
is  not  of  the  polemical  order  j  the  biography  excludes 
that.  We  cease  to  be  savage  and  caustic  when  we  are 
acquainted  with  the  inner  existence  of  a  man,  for  the 
relentlessness  of  satire  is  only  possible  to  those  who 
neither  sympathise  nor  comprehend.  What  is  here 
essayed  is  of  the  analytical,  comparative,  and  descriptive 
order;  it  hopes  to  add  something  to  historical  knowledge 
and  something  to  aesthetic  appreciation.  It  aims,  in 
short,  at  presenting  a  little  gallery  of  contemporary  kit- 
kats,  modest  in  proportion,  but  large  enough  to  show  the 
head  and  the  hand. 

Of  the  genesis  of  these  essays,  it  may  be  sufficient  to 
say  that  several  of  them  originated  in  the  fact  that  I  was 
able  to  add  something  to  the  positive  knowledge  of  a 
figure  suddenly  made  the  object  of  increased  curiosity. 
In  several  cases,  I  have  been  aided  by  the  family  of  the 
subject,  or  by  persons  in  possession  of  facts  not  hitherto 
made  public.  In  particular,  in  two  instances,  that 
eminent  poet  who  for  many  years  honoured  me  with  his 
friendship,  Robert  Browning,  laid  upon  me  as  a  duty 
the  publication  of  what  I  have  written.  What  is  here 
found,  in  matters  of  fact,  regarding  the  Sonnets  of  his 
Wife  and  the  incidents  of  the  career  of  Beddoes,  comes 
with    the   authority   and    is    presented    at   the  desire  of 


Preface  xi 


Browning.  I  need  not  produce  my  credentials  in  each 
case,  but  I  may  be  allowed  to  say  that  there  is  only  one 
of  these  essays  in  which  I  have  been  able  to  add  nothing, 
either  from  the  report  of  others  or  from  my  own  observa- 
tion, to  biographical  knowledge.  In  several,  the  personal 
impression  is  almost  entirely  my  own  or  contributed  to 
oie  from  unprinted  sources. 

If  it  should  be  suggested  that  these  little  studies  leave 
much  unsaid  and  are  far  from  exhausting  the  qualities  of 
their  subjects,  I  can  but  put  myself,  while  admitting  the 
charge  to  the  full,  under  the  protection  of  the  most 
genial  of  all  great  men  of  letters,  and  borrow  what 
Lafontaine  says  in  the  immortal  epilogue  to  the  Contes  : 

Bornons  ici  cette  carriere  : 

Les  longs  ouvrages  me  font  peur ; 

Loin  d'epuiser  une  mati^re. 

On  n'en  doit  prendre  que  la  fleur. 

That  I  have  secured  the  fine  flower  of  any  of  these 
delicate  spirits  is  more  than  I  dare  hope,  but  to  do  so 
has  at  least  been  my  aim  and  my  design. 


London,  February  1896. 


Of  the  following  Sssays,  those  on  "  The  Sonnets  from 
the  Portuguese"  and  "  Thomas  Lovell  Bed  does"  were 
originally  printed  as  prefaces  to  editions  of  the  poems^ 
issued  by  Mr.  J.  M.  Dent.  For  his  kind  permission 
to  reprint  them  my  thanks  are  due  to  him,  as  for 
similar  courtesy  to  the  proprietors  of  "  The  Fortnightly 
Review^'*  "  The  Contemporary  Review^''  "  The  New 
Review,'*  and  "  The  Century  Magazine."  All  the 
€ssays  have  been  carefully  revise  a,  and  in  several 
cases  considerably  enlarged. 


'  \ 


CONTENTS 

The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese 

I 

Keats  in  1894     .... 

19 

Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes          , 

29 

Edward  FitzGerald     ,          , 

63 

fValt  Whitman     .         ,          , 

93 

Count  Lyof  Tolstoi       .         . 

113 

Christina  Rossetti          ,         , 

133 

Lord  De   Tabley  . 

163 

Toru  Dutt 

.     197 

M.  Jose- Maria  de  Heredia           , 

213 

Walter  Pater       .         .         , 

.     239 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson         . 

.    ^7Z 

y 


THE  SONNETS 
FROM  THE  PORTUGUESE 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuo-uese 

o 

It  was  in  the  second  or  1850  edition  of  the  Poems 
in  two  volumes  that  the  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese 
were  first  given  to  the  public.  The  circumstances 
attending  their  composition  have  never  been  clearly 
related.  Mr.  Browning,  however,  eight  years  before 
his  death,  made  a  statement  to  a  friend,  with  the 
understanding  that  at  some  future  date,  after  his  own 
decease,  the  story  might  be  more  widely  told.  The 
time  seems  to  have  arrived  when  there  can  be  no 
possible  indiscretion  in  recording  a  very  pretty  episode 
of  literary  history. 

During  the  months  of  their  brief  courtship,  closing, 
as  all  the  world  knows,  in  the  clandestine  flight  and 
romantic  wedding  of  September  12,  1846,  neither  poet 
showed  any  verses  to  the  other.  Mr.  Browning,  in 
particular,  had  not  the  smallest  notion  that  the  cir- 
cumstances of  their  betrothal  had  led  Miss  Barrett 
into  any  artistic  expression  of  feeling.  As  little  did  he 
suspect  it  during  their  honeymoon  in  Paris,  or  during 
their  first  crowded  weeks  in  Italy.  They  settled,  at 
length,  in  Pisa  ;  and  being  quitted  by  Mrs.  Jamieson  and 
her  niece,  in  a  very  calm  and  happy  mood  the  young 
couple  took  up  each  his  or  her  separate  literary  work. 

A 


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Their  custom  was,  Mr.  Browning  said,  to  write 
alone,  and  not  to  show  each  other  what  they  had 
written.  This  was  a  rule  which  he  sometimes  broke 
through,  but  she  never.  He  had  the  habit  of  working 
in  a  downstairs  room,  where  their  meals  were  spread, 
while  Mrs.  Browning  studied  in  a  room  on  the  floor 
above.  One  day,  early  in  1847,  their  breakfast  being 
over,  Mrs.  Browning  went  upstairs,  while  her  husband 
stood  at  the  window  watching  the  street  till  the  table 
should  be  cleared.  He  was  presently  aware  of  some 
one  behind  him,  although  the  servant  was  gone.  It 
was  Mrs.  Browning,  who  held  him  by  the  shoulder  to 
prevent  his  turning  to  look  at  her,  and  at  the  same 
time  pushed  a  packet  of  papers  into  the  pocket  of  his 
coat.  She  told  him  to  read  that,  and  to  tear  it  up  if  he 
did  not  like  it ;  and  then  she  fled  again  to  her  own 
room. 

Mr.  Browning  seated  himself  at  the  table,  and 
unfolded  the  parcel.  It  contained  the  series  of  sonnets 
which  have  now  become  so  illustrious.  As  he  read,  his 
emotion  and  delight  may  be  conceived.  Before  he  had 
finished  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  restrain  himself, 
and,  regardless  of  his  promise,  he  rushed  upstairs,  and 
stormed  that  guarded  citadel.  He  was  early  conscious 
that  these  were  treasures  not  to  be  kept  from  the 
world  ;  "  I  dared  not  reserve  to  myself,"  he  said,  "  the 
finest  sonnets  v^Titten  in  any  language  since  Shake- 
speare's." But  Mrs.  Browning  was  very  loth  indeed 
to  consent  to  the  publication  of  what  had  been  the  very 
notes  and  chronicle  of  her  betrothal.     At  length  she 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese       3 

was  persuaded  to  permit  her  friend,  Miss  Mary  Russell 
Mitford,  to  whom  they  had  originally  been  sent  in 
manuscript,  to  pass  them  through  the  press,  although 
she  absolutely  declined  to  accede  to  Miss  Mitford's 
suggestion  that  they  should  appear  in  one  of  the 
fashionable  annuals  of  the  day.  Accordingly  a  small 
volume  was  printed  entitled  Sonnets  \  by  \  E.  B.  B.  \ 
Reading  \  Not  for  Publication  \  1847  [  ,  an  ociavo  of 
47  pages. 

When  it  was  determined  to  publish  the  sonnets  in 
the  volumes  of  1850,  the  question  of  a  title  arose. 
The  name  which  was  ultimately  chosen,  Sonnets  front 
the  Portuguese,  was  invented  by  Mr.  Browning,  as  an 
ingenious  device  to  veil  the  true  authorship,  and  yet  to 
suggest  kinship  with  that  beautiful  lyric,  called  Catarina 
to  Camoens,  in  which  so  similar  a  passion  had  been 
expressed.  Long  before  he  ever  heard  of  these  poems, 
Mr.  Browning  called  his  wife  his  "own  little  Portuguese," 
and  so,  when  she  proposed  "  Sonnets  translated  from 
the  Bosnian,"  he,  catching  at  the  happy  thought  of 
"  translated,"  replied,  **  No,  not  Bosnian — that  means 
nothing — but  from  the  Portuguese  1  They  are  Catarina's 
sonnets  I "  And  so,  in  half  a  joke,  half  a  conceit,  the 
famous  title  was  invented. 


The  psychological  moment  at  which  the  Sonnets  front 
the  Portuguese  were  composed,  was  one  of  singular  im- 
portance.     Although  she   was  in   her  forty-first  year 


Critical  Kit-Kats 


(according  to  some  accounts,  in  her  thirty-eighth),  the 
genius  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  was  but  newly  come  to  its 
maturity.  In  precocity  of  intelligence  she  had  been  so 
remarkable  as  to  become  a  type  of  childish  attainment, 
but  as  an  artist  she  was  very  slow  to  develop.  Her 
earliest  writings  were  strictly  imitative ;  the  volumes 
she  published  in  her  young  womanhood  were  full  of 
interesting  passages,  but  crude  and  jejune  to  an  extra- 
ordinary degree.  Had  Elizabeth  Barrett  died  at  the 
age  of  thirty-three,*  that  is  to  say  immediately  after  the 
publication  of  The  Seraphim^  she  would  scarcely  live 
among  the  English  poets.  It  is  to  a  subsequent  period, 
it  is  to  the  years  between  the  loss  of  her  brother 
Edward  at  Torquay  and  her  marriage,  that  those  poems 
belong  which  display  her  talent  at  their  highest  achiev- 
ment.  The  two  volumes  of  1844  lifted  her  by  a 
bound  to  the  highest  place  among  the  living  poets  of 
her  country,  and  seated  her  by  the  side  of  Tennyson. 
These  two,  in  the  genial  old  age  of  Wordsworth,  were 
left  the  sole  obvious  inheritors  of  his  throne,  for 
Robert  Browning  was  still  obscure  save  to  a  very  few. 
The  change  that  in  those  years  preceding  her  be- 
trothal had  come  to  Elizabeth  Barrett  was  a  purifying 
and  crystallising  one.  She  had  always  had  fire,  and 
she  was  to  keep  the  coal  burning  on  her  tongue,  like  the 
prophet,  until  the  end  of  her  career.  But  in  the  early 
period,   and   again  in  the  period  of  her  decline,   what 


*  T  take  for  granted  that  the  Coxhoe  date  of  her  birth,  March  6,  1806, 
must  be  the  correct  one.      But  the  crux  seems  still  unsettled. 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese       5 

was  lacking  was  light.  Her  style  was  turbid  ;  the  poet 
was  not  Sappho,  standing  in  sunlight  on  the  clilT  of 
Mitylene,  but  Pythia,  seated  in  the  smoke  and  vapour 
of  Delphi,  tortured  by  the  vehemence  of  her  own 
utterance,  torn  by  the  message  which  she  lacked  the 
art  to  deliver.  Critics  are  beginning  to  see  now,  and 
sorrowfully  to  admit,  that  what  is  causing  the  noble 
figure  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  to  recede  gradually  from 
that  front  place  in  which  Tennyson,  for  instance,  and 
Keats  hold  their  pre-eminence,  is  her  turbidity.  The 
best  poetry  may  roll  down  violent  places,  but  it  remains 
as  limpid  as  a  trout-stream ;  what  is  unfortunate  about 
Mrs.  Browning's  is  that  it  is  constantly  stained  and 
clouded. 

But  there  was  a  period — we  may  roughly  date  it 
between  1842  and  1850 — when  these  radical  faults 
affected  her  style  least.  It  was  then  that  she  reached 
the  zenith  of  her  genius,  and,  by  a  strange  and  fortu- 
nate accident,  it  was  then,  also,  that  she  attained  her 
greatest  sum  of  happiness  and  health.  Of  this  highest 
period,  the  summit  or  peak  was  the  short  space  during 
which  Robert  Browning  visited  her  as  her  affianced 
lover,  and  it  is  not  singular,  perhaps,  but  it  is  at  least 
very  interesting  and  pleasing,  to  find  her  writings  at 
that  moment  less  affected  than  at  any  other  time,  before 
or  afterwards,  by  the  errors  which  beset  her. 

In  other  words,  the  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,  al- 
though they  are  by  no  means  of  equal  merit,  reach  at  their 
best  the  highest  art  of  which  their  author  was  capable, 
and  if  we  did  not  possess  them,  we  should  be  forced  to 


Critical  Kit-Kats 


form  a  considerably  lower  estimate  of  her  possibilities 
as  an  artist  than  we  now  do.  She  seems  in  the  very 
best  of  her  work,  outside  the  volumes  of  1844,  to  be 
utterly  indifferent  to  technical  excellence.  Even  in 
those  volumes  we  see  that  her  laxity  was  absolutely 
inherent,  and  that  she  is  always  liable  to  imperfection 
and  licence.  But  the  Satinets  from  the  Portuguese  prove 
that  she  could,  at  her  purest,  throw  off  these  stains  and 
blemishes,  and  cast  her  work  in  bronze,  like  a  master. 
They  show  her  to  us  at  her  very  best,  and  they  form  the 
pinnacle  of  her  edifice  as  an  artistic  constructor.  Per- 
haps, and  to  some  readers,  they  may  be  neither  the 
most  attractive  nor  the  most  amusing  of  her  writings, 
but  to  the  critic  they  are  certainly  the  least  imperfect. 


Tiie  natural  bent  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  was  certainly 
not  to  the  sonnet.  She  was  too  dithyrambic,  too 
tumultuous,  to  be  willingly  restrained-  within  a  rigid 
form  of  verse.  She  employed  none  other  of  the  regular 
English  metres,  except  blank  verse,  which  she  treated 
with  a  sort  of  defiant  desperation,  and  terza  rima,  in 
which  she  successfully  strangled  her  genius.  Her 
lyrics  are  all  of  her  own  invention  or  adaptation,  and 
they  are  commonly  of  a  loose,  wild  form,  fit  to  receive 
her  chains  of  adverbial  caprices  and  her  tempestuous 
assonances.  But  her  love  of  Shakespeare  and  Words- 
worth drove  her  to  emulation,  and  once  and  again  she 
strove  to  bind  her  ebullient  melodies  down  to  the  strict 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese       7 

mould  of  fourteen  rhymed  iambics.  It  is  evident  that 
the  difficulties  she  encountered  piqued  her  to  return  to 
the  attack,  for  her  occasional  sonnets  became  more  and 
more  frequent.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that,  as  befitted 
so  learned  a  student  of  the  Italians,  her  sonnets,  from 
the  first,  were  accurately  built  on  the  Petrarchan  model. 
We  might  have  expected  from  her  usual  laxity  of  form 
an  adherence  to  the  Elizabethan  quatorzain,  or,  at  least, 
to  some  of  those  adaptations  in  which  Wordsworth, 
Coleridge,  and  even  Keats  indulged.  But  Miss  Barrett, 
throughout  her  career,  was  one  of  the  most  rigid  of 
Petrarchans,  and  no  fault  can  be  found  with  the  struc- 
ture of  her  octetts  and  sestetts. 

One  of  the  earliest  sonnets  of  her  mature  period  was 
that  entitled  "The  Soul's  Expression,"  which  is  so 
interesting  as  a  revelation  of  her  own  consciousness 
of  the  difficulties  which  technical  art  presented  to  her, 
and  so  valuable  an  indication  of  the  mode  in  which 
she  approached  the  sonnet-form,  that  it  may  here  be 
quoted  : — 

With  stammering  lips  and  insufficient  sound, 

I  strive  and  struggle  to  deliver  right 

That  music  of  my  nature,  day  and  night 

With  dream  and  thought  and  feeling,  interwound. 

And  inly  answering  all  the  senses  round 

With  octaves  of  a  mystic  depth  and  height. 

Which  step  out  grandly  to  the  infinite 

From  the  dark  edges  of  the  sensual  ground  i 

This  song  of  soul  I  struggle  to  out  bear 

Through  portals  of  the  sense,  sublime  and  whole. 


Critical  Kit-Kats 


And  utter  all  m;^ self  into  the  air  : 

But  if  I  did  it — as  the  thunder-roll 

Breaks  its  own  cloud — my  flesh  would  perish  there^ 

Before  that  dread  apocalypse  of  soul. 

Fine  as  this  is,  eminently  true  to  her  own  mood,  and 
singular  for  its  self-knowledge,  it  cannot  be  said  to 
promise  for  its  writer  any  great  felicity  as  a  sonneteer. 
The  perturbed  imagery,  the  wild  grammar,  the  lack  of 
a  clarified  and  disciplined  conception  of  style  are 
prominent  in  every  line.  Very  much  more  successful, 
however,  and  plainly  inspired  by  the  study  of  Words- 
worth, is  the  famous  sonnet,  "  On  a  Portrait  by  R.  B. 
Haydon,"  and  in  the  years  that  immediately  followed 
her  return  from  Torquay,  Miss  Barrett's  sonnets  came 
thicker  and  faster,  with  a  steady  increase  in  the  power 
to  give  her  own  peculiar  characteristics  of  expression 
to  this  unfamiliar  instrument.  But  the  Sonnets  from 
the  Portuguese  went  further  still.  The  little  harp  oi 
lyre  she  had  laboriously  taught  herself  to  perform  upon, 
had  just  become  familiar  to  her  fingers,  when  it  was 
called  upon  to  record  emotions  the  most  keen,  and 
imaginations  the  most  subtle,  which  had  ever  crossed 
the  creative  brain  of  its  possessor. 

Great  technical  beauty,  therefore,  is  the  mark  of 
these  wonderful  poems.  Not  merely  are  the  rhymes 
arranged  with  a  rare  science  and  with  a  precision  which 
few  other  English  poets  have  had  the  patience  to  pre- 
serve, but  the  tiresome  faults  of  Miss  Barrett's  prosody, 
those  little  foxes  which  habitually  spoil  her  gi'apes,  are 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese       9 

here  marvellously  absent.  Her  very  ear,  which  some- 
times seemed  so  dull,  with  its  "  morning  "  and  *'  inurn- 
ing,"  its  "Bacchantes"  and  "grant  us,"  here  seems  to 
be  quickened  and  strung  into  acuteness.  There  is  a 
marked  absence,  in  the  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,  of 
all  slovenly  false  rhymes,  of  all  careless  half-meaningless 
locutions,  of  all  practical  jokes  played  upon  the  parts 
of  speech.  The  cycle  opens  with  a  noble  dignit}',  and 
it  is,  on  the  whole,  preserved  at  that  high  ethical  level 
of  distinguished  poetic  utterance. 

Of  sonnet-cycles  in  the  English  language,  there  are 
but  very  few  which  can  even  be  mentioned  in  connec- 
tion with  that  which  we  are  describing.  In  the  Eliza- 
bethan age,  many  crowns  woven  of  fourteen-petalled 
blossoms  were  laid  at  the  feet  of  unknown  ladies.  The 
art  which  invested  these  groups  of  sonnets  was  mainly 
of  a  thin  and  conventional  order.  It  would  task  the 
memory  or  the  instinct  of  the  best  of  English  scholars 
to  tell  at  sight  whether  a  given  sonnet  came  from  the 
garland  of  Idea  or  of  Fidcssa,  of  Delia  or  of  Chloris. 
Two  cycles  in  that  age  immensely  surpassed  all  the 
rest,  and  we  may  safely  say  that  the  Anioretti  of 
Spenser  form  a  set  of  poems  as  much  greater  than 
those  we  have  mentioned,  as  they  are  inferior  to  Shake- 
speare's. In  later  times,  we  have  one  or  two  deliberate 
sets  of  sonnets  by  Wordsworth,  and  since  the  days  of 
Mrs.  Browning,  Rossetti's  House  of  Life.  In  foreign 
poetry,  it  is  natural  to  turn  to  the  Sonettenkranz,  in 
which,  in  1 807,  Goethe  darkly  celebrated  his  passion 
for   Minna    Herzlicb,    the    mysterious   Ottilie   of   the 


V 


10  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Wahlverwandtschaftcn.  Among  the  five  best  or  most 
striking  prolonged  poems  in  the  sonnet-form  which 
Enghsh  Hterature  possesses,  Miss  Barrett's,  however, 
must  unquestionably  be  reckoned.  No  competent  critic 
could  put  the  languid  sweetness  and  honeyed  vagueness 
of  Spenser's  daisy-chain  of  quatorzains  in  a  rank  so 
high  as  these  serried,  nervous,  and  highly-developed 
poems  must  hold,  while  Wordsworth,  perfect  as  he 
constantly  is  in  the  evolution  of  a  single  sonnet,  is 
scarcely  to  be  applauded  for  his  conduct  of  any  such 
series  of  such  poems,  nor  The  River  Diiddon  or  The 
Ecclesiastical  Sonnets  to  be  compared  for  vital  interest 
with  those  we  are  considering.  Miss  Barrett,  accord- 
ingly, is  left,  on  this  occasion,  with  but  two  com- 
petitors. Rossetti  excels  her  by  the  volume  and  im- 
petus of  his  imagery,  and  by  his  voluptuous  intrepidity, 
but  she  holds  her  own  by  the  intense  vivacity  of  her 
instinct  and  the  sincerity  of  her  picture  of  emotion 
Beside  the  immortal  melodies  of  Shakespeare,  hers  may 
be  counted  voluble,  harsh,  and  slight ;  but  even  here, 
her  sympathy  with  a  universal  passion,  the  freshness 
and  poignancy  with  which  she  treats  a  mood  that  is  not 
rare  and  almost  sickly,  not  foreign  to  the  common  ex- 
perience of  mankind,  but  eminently  normal,  direct,  and 
obvious,  give  her  a  curious  advantage.  It  is  probable 
that  the  sonnets  written  by  Shakespeare  to  his  friend 
contain  lovelier  poetry  and  a  style  more  perennially 
admirable,  but  those  addressed  by  Elizabeth  Barrett  to 
her  lover  are  hardly  less  exquisite  to  any  of  us,  and  to 
many  of  us  are  more  wholesome  and  more  intelligible. 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese     1 1 


Sincerity,  indeed,  is  the  first  gift  in  literature,  and 
perhaps  the  most  uncommon.  It  is  not  granted  to  more 
than  a  few  to  express  in  precise  and  direct  language 
their  most  powerful  emotional  experiences.  To  those 
who,  Hke  Mary  Magdalene,  have  loved  much,  the  art  is 
rarely  given  to  define  and  differentiate  their  feelings. 
The  attempt  to  render  passion  by  artistic  speech  is  com- 
monly void  of  success  to  a  pathetic  degree.  Those  who 
have  desired,  enjoyed,  and  suffered  to  the  very  edge  of 
human  capacity,  put  the  musical  instrument  to  their  lips 
to  try  and  tell  us  what  they  felt,  and  the  result  is  all  dis- 
cord and  falsetto.  There  is  no  question  that  many  of 
the  coldest  and  most  affected  verses,  such  as  we  are  apt 
to  scorn  for  their  tasteless  weakness,  must  hide  under- 
neath the  white  ash  of  their  linguistic  poverty  a  core  of 
red  hot  passion.  But  the  rare  art  of  literary  sincerity 
has  not  been  granted  to  these  inarticulate  lovers,  and 
what  cost  them  so  many  tears  affords  us  nothing  but 
fatigue  or  ridicule. 

It  is  peculiarly  true  that  women  who  are  poets  can  or 
will  but  seldom  take  us  truly  into  their  confidence  in  this 
matter.  A  natural  but  unfortunate  delicacy  leads  them 
to  write  of  love  so  platonically  or  so  obscurely  that  we 
cannot  tell  what  it  is  they  wish  to  communicate.  Not  to 
seem  so  unmaidenly  as  to  address  a  man,  they  feign  to 
be  men  themselves  and  languish  at  ihe  ladies.  We  are 
as  much  interested  and  as  much  convinced  as  we  are  at 
the  opera  when  broad-hipped  cavaliers  in  silken  tights 


12  Critical  Kit-Kats 

dance  with  slightly  shorter  girls  in  skirts.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  the  amount  of  love-poetry  written  by  women, 
and  openly  addressed  to  men,  is  very  scanty.  Our 
poetesses  write  : 

/  made  a  posy  for  my  Love 
As  fair  as  she  is  soft  and  fine ^ 

and  wonder  that  we  are  faintly  interested.  It  should  be 
"  as  tough  as  he  is  firm  and  strong,"  and  then  we  might 
really  be  inclined  to  conclude  that  the  ditty  was  inspired 
by  experience  or  instinctive  feeling.  Lady  Winchelsea's 
honest  praises  of  her  husband,  Ephelia's  couplets  on 
that  false  J.  G.  who  sailed  away  to  Tangier  and  never 
came  back  again,  the  sonnets  of  the  fair  rope-maker  of 
Lyons,  Louise  Labe,  the  tender,  thrilling  lyrics  written 
three  hundred  years  later  by  Marceline  Desbordes-Val- 
more — these  are  almost  the  only  poems  in  all  literature 
which  one  remembers  as  dealing,  in  lucidity  and  sin- 
cerity alike,  with  the  love  of  a  man  by  a  woman. 

But  the  ke3'note  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  as  an  artist  was 
sincerity.  It  is  this  qualit}',  with  all  that  it  implies, 
which  holds  together  the  edifice  of  her  st3'le,  built  of 
such  incongruous  materials  that  no  less-tempered  mortar 
could  bind  it  into  a  compact  whole.  At  no  period  of  her 
literary  life,  even  when  she  was  too  slavishly  following 
obsolete  or  tasteless  models,  was  she  otherwise  than 
sincere.  She  was  not  striving  to  produce  an  effect ;  she 
w-as  trying  with  all  the  effort  of  which  her  spirit  was 
capable,  to  say  exactly  what  was  in  her  heart.  When 
sorrow  possessed  her,  her  verse  sobbed  and  wailed  with 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese     13 

impatient  human  stress,  and  when  at  last,  while  slie 
waited  for  Death  to  take  her  by  the  hair,  it  was  Love 
instead  who  came,  she  poured  forth  the  heart  of  a  happy 
woman  without  stint  or  concealment.  The  typical  in- 
stance of  the  former  class  is  the  poem  called  "  De  Pro- 
fundis,"  written  as  soon  after  the  drowning  of  her  brother 
Edward  as  the  shattered  nerves  and  beaten  brain  per- 
mitted her  to  taste  the  solace  of  composition.  It  should 
be  read,  in  spite  of  its  comparative  inferiority,  in  con- 
nection with  the  Sonnets  from  the  Pojiitguese,  for  the 
power  it  reveals  is  the  same  ;  it  is  the  capacity,  while 
feeling  acutely  and  deeply,  to  find  appropriate,  sufficient, 
and  yet  unexaggerated  expression  for  the  emotion.  This 
great  neuropathic  artist  was  a  physician  as  well  as  a 
sufferer,  and  could  count  her  pulses  accurately  through 
all  the  spasms  of  her  anguish  and  her  ecstasy. 

When,  in  1866,  Robert  Browning  published  the  first 
selection  from  his  wife's  poems,  he  arranged  the  pieces 
in  such  a  way  as  to  give  unobtrusive  emphasis  to  the 
connection  between  the  Sonnets  from  the  Po7iitguese  and 
two  short  lyrics.  Even  if  he  had  not  placed  "  Question 
and  Answer,"  and  "  Inclusions  "  immediately  in  front  of 
the  sonnet-cycle,  we  might  have  been  justified  in  conjec- 
turing that  they  belonged  to  the  same  period  and  the 
same  mood.  The  arrangement  of  the  Sonnets  is  his- 
torical. They  are  not  heaped  together  in  accidental 
sequence,  as  Spenser's  and  Shakespeare's  seem  to  be, 
but  they  move  on  from  the  first  surprise  of  unexpected 
passion  to  the  final  complete  resignation  of  soul  and 
body  in  a  rapture  which  is  to  be  sanctified  and  heightened 


14  Critical  Kit-Kats 

by  death  itself.  It  is  therefore  possible,  I  think,  by 
careful  examination  of  the  text,  to  insert  in  the  sequence 
of  sonnets,  at  their  obvious  point  of  composition,  the 
two  lyrics  I  have  just  mentioned ;  and  for  that  purpose 
I  will  quote  them  here. 

Taking  the  Sonnets  in  our  hands,  we  meet  first  with 
the  record  of  the  violent  shock  produced  on  the  whole 
being  of  the  solitary  and  fading  recluse  by  the  discovery 
that  Love — laughing  Love  masquerading  under  the  cowl 
of  Death — has  invaded  her  sequestered  chamber.  Then 
to  amazement  succeeds  instinctive  repulsion ;  she  shrinks 
back  in  a  sort  of  horror,  in  her  chilly  twilight,  from  the 
boisterous  entrance  of  so  much  heat  and  glow.  But  this 
quickly  passes,  also,  submerged  in  the  sense  of  her  own 
unworthiness  ;  her  hands  are  numb,  her  eyes  blinded 
and  dazed — what  has  this  guest  of  kings  to  do  with  her, 
a  mourner  in  the  dust  ?  Then  follows,  in  a  crescent 
movement  of  emotion,  the  noble  image  of  Electra,  pour- 
ing her  sepulchral  urn  and  all  its  ashes  at  the  feet  of 
Love,  ashes  that  blight  and  burn,  an  affection  so  morbid 
and  vain  that  it  ma}'  rather  destroy  than  bless  the  heart 
which  provokes  the  gift.  It  is  at  this  moment,  I  think, 
between  sonnets  5  and  6,  that  "  Question  and  Answer  " 
should  be  read,  repeating  the  same  idea,  but  repeating 
it  in  a  lower  key,  with  less  violence  and  perhaps  a  shade 
less  conviction : 

Love  you  seek  for,  presupposes 
Summer  heat  and  sunny  glow. 

Tell  me,  do  you  find  moss-roses 
Budding,  blooming  in  the  snow  f 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese     15 

Snow  might  kill  the  rose-tree* s  root — 
Shake  it  quickly  from  your  foot^ 
Lest  it  harm  you  as  you  go. 

From  the  ivy  where  it  dapples 

A  grey  ruin,  stone  by  stone. 
Do  you  look  for  grapes  or  apples. 

Or  for  sad  green  leaves  alone  1 
Pluck  the  leaves  off,  two  or  three — 
Keep  them  for  morality 

When  you  shall  be  safe  and  gone. 

But  above  these  flutterings  of  the  captured  heart  the 
captor  hangs  enamoured  and  persistent,  smiling  at  the 
fiat  which  bids  him  begone :  and  the  heart  begins  to 
thaw  with  the  unreHeved  radiation.  The  poetess 
acknowledges  that  she  feels  that  she  will  stand  hence- 
forward in  his  shadow,  that  he  has  changed  for  her  the 
face  of  all  the  world.  Still,  she  dares  not  yield.  The 
tide  of  her  unworthiness  flows  up,  and  floods  all  the 
creeks  of  her  being  ;  she  can  but  hide  her  eyes,  from 
which  the  tears  are  flowing,  and  bid  him,  if  he  will  not 
go  and  leave  her,  if  he  will  persist  in  standing  there 
with  eloquent  eyes  fixed  upon  her,  to  trample  on  the 
pale  stuff  of  her  life,  too  dead  to  be  taken  to  his  arms. 
She  is  scarcely  reasonable  ;  we  feel  her  pulses  reeling, 
her  limbs  failing,  and  in  the  next  sonnet  the  wave 
recedes  for  the  final  forward  rush.  She  will  not  pour 
her  poison  on  to  his  Venice-glass,  she  will  not  love  him, 
will  not  see  him — and  in  the  next  line  she  is  folded  to 
his  arms,  murmuring,  "  I  love  thee  ...  I  love  thee  !  " 


1 6  Critical  KIt-Kats 

From  this  point  forwsrd  the  sonnets  play,  in  their 
exquisite  masque,  as  if  to  celestial  dance-music,  with 
the  wild  thoughts  and  tremulous  frolics  of  accepted  love, 
with  a  pulse  that  ever  sinks  into  more  and  more  normal 
beat,  with  an  ever  steadier  and  deeper  flush  of  the 
new-born  life.  And  here,  if  the  reader  will  lay  down 
tne  book  at  the  close  of  sonnet  i8,  he  may  interpolate 
the  lovely  lyric  called  "  Inclusions  ": 

Oh,  wilt  thou  have  my  hand,  Dear,  to  lie  along  in  thine? 
As  a  little  stone  in  a  running  stream,  it  seems  to  lie  and  pine. 
Now  drop  the  poor  pale  hand.  Dear,  unfit  to  pledge  with  thine. 

Oh,  wilt  thou  have  my  cheek.  Dear,  drawn  closer  to  thine  own  ? 
My  cheek  is  white,  my  cheek  is  worn,  by  many  a  tear  run  down. 
Now  leave  a  little  space.  Dear,  lest  it  should  wet  thine  own. 

Oh,  must  thou  have  my  soul,  Dear,  commingled  with  thy  soul? 
Red  grows  the  cheek,  and  warm  the  hand;  the  part  is  in  the 

whole  : 
Nor  hands  nor  cheeks  keep  separate,  when  soul  is  joined  to  soul. 

We  may  pursue  no  further,  save  in  the  divine  words  of 
the  sonnets  themselves,  the  record  of  this  noble  and 
exquisite  "  marriage  of  true  minds."  But  we  may  be 
thankful  that  the  accredited  chronicle  of  this  episode  in 
life  and  literature,  lifted  far  out  of  any  vagueness  of 
conjecture  or  possibility  of  misconstruction,  exists  for 
us,  distinguishing,  illuminating,  perfuming  a  great  page 
of  our  national  poetry.  Many  of  the  thoughts  that 
enrich  mankind  and  many  of  the  purest  flowers  of  the 
imagination  had  their  roots,  if  the  secrets  of  experience 


The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese     17 

were  made  known,  in  actions,  in  desires,  which  could 
not  bear  the  light  of  day,  in  hot-beds  smelling  quite 
otherwise  than  of  violet  or  sweetbriar.  But  this  cycle 
of  admirable  sonnets,  one  of  the  acknowledged  glories 
of  our  literature,  is  built  patently  and  unquestionably 
on  the  union  in  stainless  harmony  of  two  of  the  most 
distinguished  spirits  which  our  century  has  produced. 


I, 


KEATS    IN   1894 


Keats  in  1894 

Addrest  delivered  at  Hampstead  on  occasion  of  the  unveiling  */  tie 
American  Monument,  jfidy  l6,  1 894. 

It  is  with  no  small  emotion  that  we  receive  to-day, 
from  the  hands  of  his  American  admirers,  a  monu- 
ment inscribed  to  the  memory  of  Keats.  Those  of  us 
who  may  be  best  acquainted  with  the  history  of  the 
poet  will  not  be  surprised  that  you  have  convened  us 
to  the  church  of  Hampstead,  although  it  was  not  here 
that  he  was  born,  nor  here  that  he  died.  Yet  some 
who  are  present  to-day  may  desire  to  be  reminded  why 
it  is  that  when  we  think  of  Keats  we  think  of  Hamp- 
stead. It  is  in  his  twenty-first  year,  in  i8i6,  that  we 
find  the  first  record  of  his  ascent  of  this  historic 
eminence.  He  appears,  then,  on  the  brow  of  Hamp- 
stead Hill  as  the  visitor,  as  the  disciple,  of  Leigh 
Hunt,  in  his  cottage  in  the  Vale-of-Health,  a  cottage, 
so  I  am  told,  to  this  day  the  haunt  of  poets.  He  comes, 
an  ardent  lad,  with  great,  flashing  eyes,  and  heav}', 
golden  curls,  can-ying  in  his  hand  a  wreath  of  ivy  for 
the  brows  of  Mr.  Hunt.  Nearly  eighty  years  ago,  this 
pilgrimage  of  boyish  enthusiasm — but  a  few  months 
after  Waterloo,  the  last  rumblings  of  the  long  European 
wars  still  dying  away  in  the  distance.     Our  unhappy 


22  Critical  Kit-Kats 

contest  with  that  great,  young  republic,  which  you, 
Sir,  so  gracefully  represent  to-day,  just  over  and  done 
with.  How  long  ago  it  seems,  this  page  of  history  I 
How  dusty  and  shadowy ;  and  how  fresh  and  near, 
across  the  face  of  it,  the  visit  of  the  boyish  poet  to  his 
friend  and  master  on  the  hill  of  Hampstead  1 

Such,  at  all  events,  was  the  earliest  appearance  of 
Keats  in  this  place,  and  here  the  "  prosperous  open- 
ing "  of  his  poetical  career  was  made.  Here  he  first 
met  Shelley,  Hay  don,  and  perhaps  Wordsworth. 
Hence,  in  1817,  from  under  these  pleasant  trees  and 
the  **  leafy  luxury  "  of  the  Vale-of-Health  his  earliest 
volume  was  sent  forth  to  the  world.  Here,  in  lodgings 
of  his  own  in  Well  Walk,  he  settled  in  the  same  sum- 
mer, that  he  might  devote  himself  to  the  composition 
of  Endymion.  Here  his  best  friends  clustered  round 
him — Bailey  and  Cowden  Clarke,  Dilke  and  Armitage 
Brown,  and  Reynolds.  Here  it  was  that,  in  the 
autumn  of  18 18,  he  met  at  Wentworth  Place  that  brisk 
and  shapely  lady  whose  fascination  was  to  make  the 
cup  of  his  sorrows  overflow ;  hence  it  was,  too,  that 
on  the  1 8th  of  September,  1820,  he  started  for  Italy,  a 
dying  man.  All  of  Keats  that  is  vivid  and  intelligent, 
all  that  is  truly  characteristic  of  his  genius  and  his 
vitality,  is  centred  around  Hampstead,  and  you,  his 
latest  Western  friends,  have  shown  a  fine  instinct  in 
bringing  here,  and  not  elsewhere,  the  gifts  and  tributes 
of  your  love. 

If  we  find  it  easy  to  justify  the  locality  which  you 
have  chosen  for  your  monument  to  Keats,  it  is  surely  not 


Keats  in   1894  23 


less  easy,  although  more  serious  and  more  elaborate, 
to  bring  forward  reasons  for  the  existence  of  that 
monument  itself.  In  the  first  place,  that  you  should 
so  piously  have  prepared,  and  that  we  so  eagerly,  and 
so  unanimously  accept,  a  marble  effigy  of  Keats — 
what  does  it  signify,  if  not  that  we  and  and  you  alike 
acknowledge  the  fame  that  it  represents  to  be  durable, 
stimulating,  and  exalted  ?  For,  consider  with  me  for 
a  moment  how  singularly  unattached  is  the  reputation 
of  this,  our  Hampstead  poet.  It  rests  upon  no  privilege 
of  birth,  no  "  stake  in  the  country,"  as  we  say ;  it  is 
fostered  by  no  alliance  of  powerful  friends,  or  wide 
circle  of  personal  influences  ;  no  one  living  to-day  has 
seen  Keats,  or  artificially  preserves  his  memory  for  any 
private  purpose.  In  all  but  verse  his  name  was,  as  he 
said,  "  writ  in  water."  He  is  identified  with  no  pro- 
gression of  ideas,  no  religious,  or  political,  or  social 
propaganda.  He  is  either  a  poet,  or  absolutely  nothing — ■ 
we  withdraw  the  poetical  elements  from  our  conception 
of  him ;  and  what  is  left  ?  The  palest  phantom  of  a 
livery-stablekeeper's  son,  an  unsuccessful  medical 
student,  an  ineffectual,  consumptive  lad,  who  died  in 
obscurity,  more  than  seventy  years  ago. 

You  will  forgive  me  for  reminding  you  of  this 
absence  of  all  secondary  qualities,  of  all  outer  accom- 
plishments of  life,  in  the  career  of  that  great  man, 
whom  we  celebrate  to-day,  because,  in  so  doing,  I 
exalt  the  one  primary  quality  which  raised  him  among 
the  principalities  and  powers  of  the  human  race,  and 
makes  our  celebration  of  him  to-day  perfectly  rational 


24  Critical  Kit-Kats 

and  explicable  to  all  instructed  men  and  women.  It 
is  not  every  one  who  appreciates  poetry.  It  may  be 
that  such  appreciation  is  really  a  somewhat  rare  and 
sequestered  gift.  But  all  practical  men  can  under- 
stand that  honour  is  due  to  those  who  have  performed 
a  difficult  and  noble  task  with  superlative  distinction. 
We  may  be  no  politicians,  but  we  can  comprehend  the 
enthusiasm  excited  by  a  consummate  statesman.  Be  it 
a  sport  or  a  profession,  an  art  or  a  discovery,  all  men 
and  women  can  acquiesce  in  the  praise  which  is  due  to 
him  who  has  exercised  it  the  best  out  of  a  thousand  who 
have  attempted  it.  This,  then,  would  be  3'our  answer 
to  any  who  should  question  the  propriety  of  your  zeal 
or  of  our  gratitude  to-day.  We  are  honouring  John 
Keats,  we  should  reply  in  unison,  because  he  did  with 
superlative  charm  and  skill  a  thing  which  mankind  has 
agreed  to  include  among  the  noblest  and  most  elevated 
occupations  of  the  human  intelligence.  We  honour,  in 
the  lad  who  passed  so  long  unobserved  among  the 
inhabitants  of  Hampstead,  a  poet,  and  nothing  but  a 
poet,  but  one  of  the  very  greatest  poets  that  the  modern 
world  has  seen. 

The  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford  reminds  me  that 
Tennyson  was  more  than  once  heard  to  assert  that 
Keats,  had  his  life  been  prolonged,  would  have  been 
our  greatest  poet  since  Milton.  This  conviction  is  one 
now  open  to  discussion,  of  course,  but  fit  to  be  pro- 
pounded in  any  assemblage  of  competent  judges.  It 
may  be  stated,  at  least,  and  yet  the  skies  not  fall  upon 
our  heads.     Fifty  years  ago  to  have  made  such  a  pro- 


Keats  in   1894  25 

position  in  public  would  have  been  thought  ridiculous, 
and  sixty  years  ago  almost  wicked.  When  the  late 
Lord  Houghton — a  name  so  dear  to  many  present,  a 
name  never  to  be  mentioned  without  sympathy  in  any 
collection  of  literary  persons — when  Monckton  Milnes, 
as  in  1848  he  still  was,  published  his  delightful  life  of 
Keats,  it  was  widely  looked  upon  as  a  rash  and  fantastic 
act  to  concentrate  so  much  attention  on  so  imperfect  a 
career.  But  all  that  is  over  now.  Keats  lives,  as  he 
modestly  assured  his  friends  would  be  the  case,  among 
the  English  poets.  Nor  among  them,  merely,  but  in 
the  first  rank  of  them — among  the  very  few  of  whom 
we  instinctively  think  whenever  the  characteristic  verse- 
men  of  our  race  are  spoken  of. 

To  what  does  he  owe  his  pre-eminence — he,  the 
boy  in  this  assemblage  of  strong  men  and  venerable 
greybeards,  he  who  had  ceased  to  sing  at  an  age  when 
most  of  them  were  still  practising  their  prosodical 
scales  ?  To  answer  this  adequately  would  take  us 
much  too  far  afield  for  a  short  address,  the  object  of 
which  is  simply  to  acknowledge  with  decency  your 
amiable  gift.  But  some  brief  answer  I  must  essay  to 
make.  Originality  of  poetic  style  was  not,  it  seems 
to  me,  the  predominant  characteristic  of  Keats.  It 
might  have  come  with  ripening  years,  but  it  cannot 
be  at  all  certain  that  it  would.  It  never  came  to  Pope 
or  to  Lamartine,  to  Virgil  or  to  Tennyson.  It  has 
come  to  poets  infinitely  the  inferiors  of  these,  infinitely 
the  inferiors  of  Keats.  Those  who  strive  after  direct 
originality  forget   that  to  be  unlike  those  who   have 


26  Critical  Kit-Kats 

preceded  us,  in  all  the  forms  and  methods  of  expression, 
is  not  by  any  means  certainly  to  be  either  felicitous  or 
distinguished.  There  is  hardly  any  excellent  feature 
in  the  poetry  of  Keats  which  is  not  superficially  the 
feature  of  some  well-recognised  master  of  an  age  pre- 
cedent to  his  own.  He  boldly  takes  down,  as  from 
some  wardrobe  of  beautiful  and  diverse  raiment,  the 
dress  of  Spenser,  of  Milton,  of  Homer,  of  Ariosto,  of 
Fletcher,  and  wears  each  in  turn,  thrown  over  shoulders 
which  completely  change  its  whole  appearance  and  pro- 
portion. But,  if  he  makes  use  of  modes  which  are 
already  familiar  to  us,  in  their  broad  outlines,  as  the 
modes  invented  by  earlier  masters,  it  is  mainly  because 
his  temperament  was  one  which  imperatively  led  him 
to  select  the  best  of  all  possible  forms  of  expression. 
His  excursions  into  other  people's  provinces  were 
always  undertaken  with  a  view  to  the  annexation  of 
the  richest  and  most  fertile  acres. 

It  is  comparatively  vain  to  speculate  as  to  the  future 
of  a  man  whose  work  was  all  done  between  the  ages 
of  nineteen  and  four-and-twenty.  Yet  I  think  we  may 
see  that  what  Keats  was  rapidly  progressing  towards, 
until  the  moment  when  his  health  gave  way,  was  a 
crystallisation  into  one  fused  and  perfect  style  of  all 
the  best  elements  of  the  poetry  of  the  ages.  When 
we  think  of  Byron,  we  see  that  he  would  probably 
have  become  absorbed  in  the  duties  of  the  ruler  of  a 
nation  ;  in  Shelley,  we  conjecture  that  all  was  being 
merged  in  the  politician  and  the  humanitarian ;  but  in 
Keats  poetry  was  ever  steadily  and  exclusively  ascen- 


Keats  in   1894  27 

dant.  Shall  I  say  what  will  startle  you  if  I  confess 
that  I  sometimes  fancy  that  we  lost  in  the  author  of  the 
five  great  odes  the  most  masterful  capacity  for  poetic 
expression  which  the  world  has  ever  seen  ? 

Be  this  as  it  may,  without  vain  speculation  we  may 
agree  that  we  possess  even  in  this  fragment  of  work, 
in  this  truncated  performance,  one  of  the  most  splendid 
inheritances  of  English  literature.  "  I  have  loved  the 
principle  of  beauty  in  all  things,"  Keats  most  truly  said, 
"  the  mighty  abstract  idea  of  beauty  in  all  things."  It 
is  this  passion  for  intellectual  beauty — less  disturbed 
perhaps  by  distracting  aims  in  him  than  in  any  other 
writer  of  all  time — that  sets  the  crown  on  our  conception 
of  his  poetry.  When  he  set  out  upon  his  mission,  as  a 
boy  of  twenty,  he  entered  that  "  Chamber  of  Maiden 
Thought "  of  which  he  speaks  to  Reynolds,  where  he 
became  intoxicated  with  the  light  and  the  atmosphere. 

Many  of  his  warmest  admirers  seem  to  have  gone 
with  him  no  further,  to  have  stayed  there  among  the 
rich  colours  and  the  Lydian  melodies  and  the  enchant- 
ing fresh  perfumes.  But  the  real  Keats  evades  them  if 
they  pass  no  further.  He  had  already  risen  to  graver 
and  austerer  things,  he  had  already  bowed  his  shoulders 
under  the  burden  of  the  mystery.  But  even  in  those 
darker  galleries  and  up  those  harsher  stairs  he  took 
one  lamp  with  him,  the  light  of  harmonious  thought. 
The  profound  and  exquisite  melancholy  of  his  latest 
verse  is  permeated  with  this  conception  of  the  loftiest 
beauty  as  the  only  consolation  in  our  jarring  and  be- 
wildered world  : 


28  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty — that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know. 

And  now,  Sir,  we  turn  again  to  you  and  to  the  gracious 
gift  you  bring  us.  In  one  of  his  gay  moods  Keats 
wrote  to  his  brother  George  in  Kentucky  :  "  If  I  had  a 
prayer  to  make,  it  should  be  that  one  of  your  children 
should  be  the  first  American  poet."  That  wish  was  net 
realised ;  the  "little  child  o'  the  western  wild"  remained, 
I  believe,  resolutely  neglectful  of  the  lyre  its  uncle 
offered  to  it.  But  the  prophecies  of  great  poets  are 
fulfilled  in  divers  ways,  and  in  a  broader  sense  all  the 
recent  poets  of  America  are  of  Keats's  kith  and  kin. 
Not  one  but  has  felt  his  influence;  not  one  but  has 
been  swayed  by  his  passion  for  the  ethereal  beauty  ; 
not  one  but  is  proud  to  recognise  his  authority  and 
dignity. 

The  ceremony  of  to-day,  so  touching  and  so  signifi- 
cant, is  really,  therefore,  the  pilgrimage  of  long-exiled 
children  to  what  was  once  the  home  of  their  father. 


THOMAS    LOVELL   BEDDOES 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes 


In  a  letter  written  to  Kelsall  in  1824,  Beddoes  makes 
the  following  remarks  on  the  poetical  situation  of  the 
moment : 

"  The  disappearance  of  Shelley  from  the  world  seems, 
like  the  tropical  setting  of  that  luminary  to  which  his 
poetical  genius  can  alone  be  compared,  with  reference  to 
the  companions  of  his  day,  to  have  been  followed  by 
instant  darkness  and  owl-season  ;  whether  the  voci- 
ferous Darley  is  to  be  the  comet,  or  tender  full-faced 
L.  E.  L.  the  milk-and-watery  moon  of  our  darkness,  are 
questions  for  the  astrologers  ;  if  I  were  the  literary 
weather-guesser  for  1825  I  would  safely  prognosticate 
fog,  rain,  blight  in  due  succession  for  its  dullard 
months." 

When  these  words  were  written,  the  death  of  Byron 
four  months  previously  had  closed,  for  English  readers, 
a  romantic  phase  of  our  national  verse.  If  Keats, 
Shelley,  and  Byron,  however,  were  gone,  it  may  be  ob- 
jected that  all  the  other  great  poets  of  the  age  survived. 
This  is  true  in  a  physical  sense,  but  how  many  of  them 
were  still  composing  verse  of  any  brilliant  merit  ?     Not 


32  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Coleridge,  long  ago  stricken  dumb  to  verse  ;  not  Words- 
worth, prosing  on  without  the  stimulus  of  inspiration  ; 
even  Moore  or  Southey  were  vocal  no  longer  ;  Campbell 
and  Scott  had  practically  taken  farewell  of  the  Muse. 
English  poetry  had  been  in  blossom  from  1795  to  1820 
but  the  marvellous  bloom  was  over,  and  the  petals  were 
scattered  on  the  grass. 

The  subject  of  this  memoir  began  to  write  at  the 
very  moment  of  complete  exhaustion,  when  the  age  was 
dazzled  with  excess  of  genius,  and  when  the  nation  was 
taking  breath  for  a  fresh  burst  of  song.  He  had  the 
misfortune  to  be  a  young  man  when  Keats  and  Shelley 
were  just  dead,  and  when  Tennyson  and  Browning  were 
schoolboys.  In  the  words  which  have  just  been  quoted 
he  has  given  a  humorous  view  of  the  time,  which  shows 
that,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  he  had  grasped  its  char- 
acteristics. Among  his  exact  contemporaries  there  was 
no  one,  except  Praed,  who  was  some  months  his  senior, 
who  inherited  anything  like  genius.  Beddoes  was  four 
years  younger  than  Hood,  two  years  older  than  Eliza- 
beth Barrett.  No  other  name  has  survived  worthy  of 
being  even  named  beside  his  as  a  poet,  except  Macaulay, 
with  whom  he  has  nothing  in  common.  He  was  early 
dissuaded  from  the  practice  of  verse,  and  all  that  he  has 
left,  which  is  of  any  sterling  value,  was  composed 
between  1821,  when  he  published  The  Improvisatore^ 
and  1826,  when  he  practically  finished  Death! s  Jest-Book. 
He  belongs  to  those  five  years  of  exhaustion  and  me- 
diocrit}^  and  the  effect  of  having  to  write  at  such  a 
period,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  dwarfed,  restrained,  and 


Thomas   Lovell  Beddoes  33 

finally  quenched  his  poetical  faculty.  It  is  not  saying 
much,  yet  it  is  mere  justice  to  insist,  that  Beddoes  was, 
during  those  five  years,  the  most  interesting  talent  en- 
gaged in  writing  English  verse., 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  was  born  in  Rodney  Place, 
Clifton,  on  the  20th  of  July,  1803.  He  was  the  eldest 
son  of  a  celebrated  physician,  Dr.  Thomas  Beddoes, 
who  died  in  1809,  and  left  his  son  to  the  guardianship 
of  Davies  Giddy,  afterwards  known  as  Sir  Davies  Gil- 
bert, P.R.S.,  who  lived  for  thirty  years  longer.  The 
boy's  mother,  Anna,  was  a  sister  of  Maria  Edgeworth, 
the  novelist.  He  was  educated  at  Bath  Grammar 
School  and  at  the  Charterhouse,  where,  as  early  as  18 17, 
he  began  to  write  verses.  Of  his  character  at  school, 
where  he  showed  signs  at  once  of  that  eccentricity  and 
independence  of  manners  which  were  to  distinguish  him 
through  life,  a  schoolfellow,  Mr.  C.  D.  Bevan,  has  pre- 
served a  very  entertaining  account,  from  which  this 
short  extract  may  be  given  : 

"  He  knew  Shakespeare  well  when  I  first  saw  him, 
and  during  his  stay  at  the  Charterhouse  made  himself 
master  of  all  the  best  English  dramatists,  from  Shake- 
speare's time,  or  before  it,  to  the  plays  of  the  day.  He 
liked  acting,  and  was  a  good  judge  of  it,  and  used  to 
give  apt  though  burlesque  imitations  of  the  popular 
actors,  particularly  of  Kean  and  Macready.  Though  his 
voice  was  harsh  and  his  enunciation  offensively  con- 

c 


34  Critical  Kit-Kats 

ceited,  he  read  with  so  much  propriety  of  expression 
and  manner  that  1  was  always  glad  to  listen  :  even  when 
I  was  pressed  into  the  service  as  his  accomplice,  or  his 
enemy,  or  his  love,  with  a  due  accompaniment  of  curses, 
caresses,  or  kicks,  as  the  course  of  his  declamation  re- 
quired. One  play  in  particular,  Marlow's  tragedy  of 
Dr.  Faustus,  excited  my  admiration,  and  was  fixed  on 
my  memory  in  this  way." 

At  school  he  came  under  the  influence  of  Fielding, 
and  wrote  a  novel,  entitled  Cynthio  and  Bugboo,  the  loss 
of  which  we  need  scarcely  deplore,  as,  according  to  the 
same  authority,  it  was  marked  by  "  all  the  coarseness, 
little  of  the  wit,  and  none  of  the  truth  of  his  original." 
The  fragments  of  his  schoolbo}'-  verse,  in  particular  the 
rhapsody  of  Alfarabi,  display  a  very  singular  adroitness 
in  the  manufacture  of  easy  blank  verse,  and  precocious 
tendency  to  a  species  of  mocking  metaphysics,  both 
equally  unlike  a  child.  In  July,  1 8 19,  while  still  at 
Charterhouse,  a  sonnet  of  his  was  printed  in  the  Morn- 
wg  Post.  On  the  1st  of  May,  1820,  Beddoes  proceeded 
to  Oxford,  and  was  entered  a  commoner  at  Pembroke, 
which  had  been  his  father's  college. 

Although  he  had  been  a  forward  boy  at  school.  Bed- 
does  passed  through  Oxford  without  any  academic  dis- 
tinction. He  was  a  freshman  of  eighteen  when,  in  1821, 
he  published  his  first  volume,  The  Improvisatore,  of 
which  he  afterwards  carefully  tried  to  destroy  every 
copy.  In  1822  he  published,  as  another  thin  pamphlet, 
The  Brides'  Tragedy,  which  has  also  become  extremely 
rare.     These  two  httle  Dooks,  the  work  of  an  under- 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  35 

graduate  less  than  twenty  years  of  age,  are  the  only 
ones  which  Beddoes  ever  published.  The  remainder  of 
his  writings,  whether  lyrical  or  dramatic,  were  issued 
posthumously,  not  less  than  thirty  years  later.  The 
Brides'  Tragedy  attracted  some  notice  in  literary  circles  ; 
it  secured  for  the  young  Oxford  poet  the  friendship  of  a 
man  much  older  than  himself,  but  of  kindred  tastes, 
Bryan  Waller  Procter.  The  dramatic  poems  of  "  Barry 
Cornwall,"  of  which  Mirandola  was  then  the  latest, 
had  been  appearing  in  rapid  succession,  and  their 
amiable  author  was  a  person  of  considerable  influence. 
It  was  Procter  who,  in  1823,  introduced  Beddoes  to 
♦  Thomas  Forbes  Kelsall,  a  young  lawyer  practising  at 
Southampton.  It  had  been  thought  well  that  Beddoes, 
who  was  sadly  behind-hand  with  his  studies,  should  go 
down  to  this  quiet  town  to  read  for  his  bachelor's  degree, 
and  he  remained  at  Southampton  for  some  months,  in 
great  intimacy  with  Kelsall,  and  forming  no  other 
acquaintance. 

While  he  was  at  Southampton,  Beddoes  wrote  a 
great  deal  of  desultory  verse,  almost  all  of  a  dramatic 
order ;  to  this  period  belong  The  Second  Brother  and 
Torrismond,  among  other  fragments.  Already  he  was 
seized  with  that  inability  to  finish,  that  lack  of  an 
organic  principle  of  poetical  composition,  which  were  to 
prevent  him  from  mounting  to  those  heights  of  which 
his  facility  and  brilliancy  seem  to  promise  him  an  easy 
ascent.  The  death  of  Shelley  appears  to  have  drawn 
his  attention  to  the  genius  of  that  writer,  by  which  he 
was   instantly    fascinated,  and,  as  it  were,  absorbed. 


36  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Outside  the  small  circle  of  Shelley's  personal  friends, 
Beddoes  was  perhaps  the  first  to  appreciate  the  magni- 
tude of  his  merit,  as  he  was  certainly  the  earliest  to 
imitate  Shelley's  lyrical  work.  His  letters  to  Procter 
and  Kelsall  are  full  of  evidence  of  his  over-mastering 
passion  for  Shelley,  and  it  was  to  Beddoes,  in  the  first 
instance,  that  the  publication  of  that  writer's  Posthu- 
mous Poems  was  due.  In  the  winter  of  1823  Beddoes 
started  a  subscription  with  his  two  friends,  and  cor- 
responded with  John  Hunt  on  the  subject.  They 
promised  to  take  250  copies,  but  Hunt  said  that  Mrs. 
Shelley  ought  to  have  some  profit.  This  seemed 
hardly  fair  to  Beddoes ;  "  for  the  twinkling  of  this  very 
distant  chance  we,  three  poor  honest  admirers  of 
Shelle3^'s  poetry,  are  certainly  to  pay."  At  this  time 
Beddoes  was  writing  two  romantic  dramas.  Lovers 
Arrow  Poisoned  and  The  Last  Man,  both  founded  on 
the  tragic  model  of  Webster,  Cyril  Tourneur,  and 
Middleton.  Of  these  plays  not  very  much  was  ever 
written,  and  still  less  is  now  in  existence.  Of  The 
Last  Man  he  writes,  in  February  1824:  "There  are 
now  three  first  acts  in  my  drawer.  When  I  have  got 
two  more,  I  shall  stitch  them  together,  and  stick  the 
sign  of  a  fellow  tweedHng  a  mask  in  his  fingers,  with 
*  good  entertainment  for  man  and  ass  '  understood." 

The  year  1824  he  spent  in  London,  Oxford,  and 
Bristol.  Already  his  eccentric  sh3'ness  had  grown  upon 
him.  He  writes  to  Kelsall  from  his  lodgings  in 
Devereux  Court,  Temple,  March  29,  1824: 

"  Being  a  little  shy,  and  not  a  little  proud  perhaps, 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  37 

I  have  held  back  and  never  made  the  first  step  towards 
discovering  my  residence  or  existence  to  any  of  my 
family  friends  [in  London].  In  consequence  I  have 
lived  in  a  deserted  state,  which  I  could  hardly  bear 
much  longer  without  sinking  into  that  despondency  on 
the  brink  of  which  I  have  sate  so  long.  Your  cheerful 
presence  at  times  (could  we  not  mess  together  occasion- 
ally ?)  would  set  me  up  a  good  deal,  but  perhaps  you 
had    better    not    draw   my   heavy  company   on    your 

head I  met  an  intelligent  man  who  had  lived  at 

Hampstead,  seen  Keats,  and  was  read  in  his  and  the 
poems  of  Shelley.  On  my  mentioning  the  former  by 
accident  to  him,  he  complimented  me  on  mj^  similarity 
of  countenance  ;  he  did  not  think  much  of  K.'s  genius, 
and  therefore  did  not  say  it  insincerely  or  sycophantic- 
ally.  The  same  was  said  by  Procter  and  Taylor 
before." 

Mrs.  Procter,  who  had  known  both  poets,  made  the 
same  remark  about  Beddoes  to  myself ;  but  she  added 
that  she  never  saw  in  the  latter  the  extraordinary  look 
of  inspiration  which  was  occasionally  to  be  detected  in 
the  great  eyes  of  Keats. 

In  the  summer  of  1824  Beddoes  was  hastily  called 
to  Florence  by  the  illness  of  his  mother,  who  was  living 
there.  She  died  before  he  could  reach  her,  but  he 
spent  some  weeks  there,  saw  Walter  Savage  Landor, 
and  then  returned  to  Clifton  in  charge  of  his  sisters. 
In  October  of  the  same  year  he  began  to  study 
German,  a  language  then  but  little  known  in  this 
country.      He   attacked    it    languidly    at    first,    then 


38  Critical  Kit-Kats 

with  ever-increasing  eagerness  and  zest.  But  the 
Elizabethan  drama  was  still  his  principal  delight,  and 
he  studied  it,  even  in  its  least  illustrious  forms,  with 
extraordinary  closeness  and  gusto.  Writing  to 
Kelsall  from  Clifton  (January  11,  1825),  he  remarks, 
apropos  of  a  revival  of  The  Fatal  Dowry  of  Massinger  : 

"  Say  what  you  will,  I  am  convinced  the  man  who 
is  to  awaken  the  drama  must  be  a  bold  trampling 
fellow — no  creeper  into  worm-holes — no  reviver  even, 
however  good.  These  reanimations  are  vampire-cold. 
Such  ghosts  as  Marloe,  Webster,  &c.,  are  better 
dramatists,  better  poets,  I  dare  say,  than  any  contem- 
porary of  ours,  but  they  are  ghosts — the  worm  is  in  their 
pages — and  we  want  to  see  something  that  our  great- 
grandsires  did  not  know.  With  the  greatest  reverence 
for  all  the  antiquities  of  the  drama,  I  still  think  that  we 
had  better  beget  than  revive,  attempt  to  give  the  literature 
of  this  age  an  idiosyncracy  and  spirit  of  its  own,  and 
only  raise  a  ghost  to  gaze  on,  not  to  live  with,  just 
now  the  drama  is  a  haunted  ruin.  I  am  glad  that  you 
are  awakening  to  a  sense  of  Darley.  He  must  have 
no  little  perseverance  to  have  gone  through  so  much 
of  that  play ;  it  will  perchance  be  the  first  star  of  a 
new  day." 

The  result  of  so  much  meditation  on  the  drama 
was  the  composition  of  more  fragments.  The  Second 
Brother^  Torrismond,  and  The  Last  Man  occupied 
Beddoes  during  the  winter  and  spring  of  1 824-5.  But 
none  of  these  approached  completion.  He  then  planned 
the  publication    of  a   volume  of  lyrics,  to  be  entitled 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  39 

Otitidana,  or  Effusions,  amorous,  pathetic,  and  fantastical, 
which  was  to  include  most  of  the  miscellaneous  verses 
reprinted  in  1890,  and  others  which  are  now  lost. 
On  the  25th  of  May,  1825,  Beddoes  took  an  ordinary 
bachelor's  degree  at  Oxford.  He  writes  to  Kelsall 
from  Pembroke  College,  on  the  8th  of  June,  announcing 
for  the  first  time  the  most  celebrated  of  his  writings : 

"  Oxford  is  the  most  indolent  place  on  earth.  I  have 
fairly  done  nothing  in  the  world  but  read  a  play  or  two 
of  Schiller,  ^schylus  and  Euripides — you  I  suppose 
read  German  now  as  fast  as  English.  I  do  not  finish 
that  2nd  Brother  you  saw  but  am  thinking  of  a  very 
Gothic-styled  tragedy  for  which  I  have  a  jewel  of  a 
name : 

Death's  Jestbook — 

of  course  no  one  will  ever  read  it.  Mr.  Milman  (our 
poetry  professor)  has  made  me  quite  unfashionable 
here  by  denouncing  me  as  one  of  a  '  villainous  school.' 
I  wish  him  another  son." 

He  now  suddenly  determined  to  abandon  literature, 
which  had  suggested  itself  to  him  as  a  profession,  and 
take  up  the  study  of  medicine.  We  find  him,  there- 
fore, on  the  19th  of  July,  1825,  at  Hamburg,  "sitting 
on  a  horse-hair  sofa,  looking  over  the  Elbe,  with  his 
meerschaum  at  his  side,  full  of  Grave,  and  abundantly 
prosaic.  To-morrow,  according  to  the  prophecies  of 
the  diligence,  he  will  set  out  for  Hanover,  and  by  the 
end  of  this  week  mein  Herr  Thomas  will  probably  be  a 
Doctor  of  the  University  of  GcJttingen,"     This,  however, 


40  Critical  Kit-Kats 

was  rather  premature.  He  did  not  become  a  doctor 
until  much  later.  It  is  important  to  observe  that  the 
exodus  to  Germany  thus  casually  and  nonchalantly 
taken  involved  nothing  less,  as  it  proved,  than  a  com- 
plete alteration  in  all  his  habits.  Except  for  very  few 
and  brief  visits,  he  did  not  return  to  England  for  the 
rest  of  his  life,  and  he  so  completely  adopted  the  lan- 
guage and  thoughts  of  a  German  student  as  almost  to 
cease  to  be  an  Englishman. 

At  Gottingen  the  celebrated  man  of  science.  Prof. 
Blumenbach,  became  the  most  intimate  friend  of 
Beddoes.  The  latter  threw  himself  with  the  utmost 
ardour  into  the  study  of  physiology  and  medicine.  He 
did  not,  however,  at  first  abandon  his  design  of  becom- 
ing an  English  dramatic  poet.  He  writes  to  Kelsall 
(Dec.  4,  1825): 

"  I  am  perhaps  somewhat  independent,  and  have  a 
competence  adequate  to  my  philosophical  desires.  There 
are  reasons  why  I  should  reject  too  much  practice  if  it 
did  intrude  ;  really  I  am  much  more  likely  to  remain  a 
patientless  physician.  And  now  I  will  end  this  un- 
necessary subject,  by  telling  you  that  DeatUs  Jestbook 
goes  on  like  the  tortoise,  slow  and  sure ;  I  think  it  will 
be  entertaining,  very  unamiable,  and  utterly  unpopular. 
Very  likely  it  may  be  finished  in  the  spring  or  autumn." 

His  misanthropy,  for  it  almost  deserves  so  harsh  a 
name,  grew  upon  him.  "  I  feel  myself,"  he  wrote,  "  in 
a  measure  alone  in  the  world  and  likely  to  remain  so, 
for,  from  the  experiments  I  have  made,  I  fear  I  am  a 
non-conductor  of  friendship,  a  not-very-likeable  person, 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  41 

so  that  I  must  make  sure  of  my  own  respect,  and 
occupy  that  part  of  the  brain  wliich  should  be  employed 
in  imaginative  attachments  in  the  pursuit  of  immaterial 
and  unchanging  good."  In  April,  1826,  DcaiiUs  Jest- 
book  is  still  lying  "  like  a  snow-ball,  and  I  give  it  a  kick 
every  now  and  then,  out  of  mere  scorn  and  ill-humour ; 
the  4th  act,  and  I  may  say  the  5th,  are  more  than  half 
done,  so  that  at  last  it  will  be  a  perfect  mouse,  but  such 
doggerell  1  "  None  the  less  did  he  anticipate  that  the 
poem  would  come  "like  an  electric  shock  among  the 
small  critics."  In  October,  1826,  it  is  "done  and  done 
for,  its  limbs  being  as  scattered  and  unconnected  as 
those  of  the  old  gentleman  whom  Medea  minced  and 
boiled  young.  I  have  tried  20  times  at  least  to  copy 
it  fair."  He  intended  at  this  time  to  send  the  MS.  to 
Kelsall  and  Procter  to  be  seen  through  the  press,  but 
he  delayed  until  he  could  bring  the  poem  himself  to 
London. 

His  monotonous  existence  in  Gottingen  was  broken 
in  the  spring  of  1828  by  a  visit  of  a  few  days  to 
England,  where  he  took  his  degree  of  M.A.  at  Oxford, 
and  hurried  back  to  Germany.  Meanwhile  he  had  left 
Death's  Jestbook  with  Procter  and  Kelsall  for  publica- 
tion, but  they  decided  that  it  must  be  "revised  and 
improved."  In  his  fifth  year  in  Germany,  "having 
already  been  at  Gottingen  the  time  which  it  is  allowed 
for  any  student  to  remain  there,"  he  transferred  his 
residence  to  Wurzburg,  in  Bavaria;  "a  very  clever 
pro  lessor  of  medicine  and  capital  midwife  brought  me 
here,  and    a   princely  hospital."      In   1831    there  was 


42  Critical  Kit-Kats 

again  some  abortive  talk  of  publishing  Deaths  Jestbook. 
About  this  time  Beddoes  became  more  and  more 
affected  by  opinions  of  the  extreme  radical  order ;  he 
subscribed  towards  "  the  support  of  candidates  who 
were  professed  supporters  of  the  Reform  Bill,"  and  he 
began  to  affect  a  warm  personal  interest  in  certain 
revolutionary  Poles  who  had  taken  up  their  abode  in 
Wiirzburg.  He  continued  his  medical  studies  with 
great  thoroughness,  and  in  the  summer  of  1832  he 
took  his  degree  of  doctor  of  medicine  in  the  University, 
being  now  in  his  thirtieth  year.  He  was  more  and 
more  mixed  up  in  political  intrigue,  and  on  the  25th  of 
September,  1832,  he  somewhat  obscurely  says  : 

"  The  absurdity  of  the  King  of  Bavaria  has  cost  me 
a  good  deal,  as  I  was  obliged  to  oppose  every  possible 
measure  to  the  arbitrary  illegality  of  his  conduct,  more 
for  the  sake  of  future  objects  of  his  petty  royal  malice 
than  my  own,  of  course  in  vain." 

He  was  soon  after  obliged  to  fly,  "  banished  by  that 
ingenious  Jackanapes  of  Bavaria,"  in  common  with 
several  of  his  distinguished  Wiirzburg  friends.  He 
took  refuge,  first  in  Strassburg,  then  in  Zurich.  He 
brought  with  him  to  Switzerland  a  considerable  repu- 
tation as  a  ph3'siologist,  for  Blumenbach,  in  a  testi- 
monial which  exists,  calls  him  the  best  pupil  he  ever 
had.  It  appears  that  he  now  assumed,  what  he  after- 
wards dropped,  the  degree  of  M.D.,  and  had  some 
practice  as  a  physician  in  the  town  of  Zurich.  In  1835 
the  surgeon  Schoenlien  proposed  Beddoes  to  the 
medical  faculty  of  the  University  as  professor  of  Com- 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  43 


parative  Anatomy,  and  the  latter  unanimously  seconded 
him.  His  election,  however,  was  not  ratified,  accord- 
ing to  one  of  his  letters,  for  political  reasons,  according 
to  another  because  he  was  found  to  be  ineligible,  from 
his  having  published  nothing  of  a  medical  character. 
He  spent  several  healthy  and  tolerably  happy  years  in 
Zurich,  "what,"  he  says  in  March,  1837,  "with  a 
careless  temper  and  the  pleasant  translunary  moods  I 
walk  and  row  myself  into  upon  the  lakes  and  over  the 
Alps  of  Switzerland ; "  and  once  more,  as  he  quaintly 
put  it,  he  began  "  to  brew  small  ale  out  of  the  water 
of  the  fountain  of  the  horse's  foot,"  working  again  on 
the  revision  of  Death's  Jestbook.  He  also  began  to 
prepare  for  the  press  a  collection  of  his  narrative  and 
lyrical  poems,  to  be  called  The  Ivory  Gate.  In  1838  he 
was  engaged  in  translating  Grainger's  work  on  the 
Spinal  Cord  into  German. 

He  had  spent  six  years  at  Zurich,  and  was  beginning 
to  feel  that  city  to  have  become  his  settled  home,  when, 
on  the  8th  of  September,  1839,  a  political  catastrophe 
destroyed  his  peace  of  mind.  A  mob  of  six  thousand 
peasants,  "  half  of  them  unarmed,  and  the  other  half 
armed  with  scythes,  dung-forks  and  poles,  led  on  by  a 
mad  fanatic  and  aided  by  some  traitors  in  the  cabinet, 
and  many  in  the  town,"  stormed  Zurich,  and  upset  the 
liberal  government  of  the  canton.  Beddoes  observed 
the  riot  from  a  window,  and  witnessed  the  murder  of 
the  minister  Hegetschweiler,  who  was  one  of  his  best 
friends.  He  wrote :  "  In  consequence  of  this  state  of 
things,  in  which  neither  property  nor  person  is  secure, 


44  Critical  Kit-Kats 

I  shall  find  it  necessary  to  give  up  my  present  resi- 
lience entirely.  Indeed,  the  dispersion  of  my  friends 
and  acquaintance,  all  of  whom  belonged  to  the  liberal 
party,  renders  it  nearly  impossible  for  me  to  remain 
longer  here."  He  loitered  on,  however,  until  March, 
1840,  when  his  life  was  threatened  by  the  insurgents, 
and  he  was  helped  to  fly  from  Zurich  in  secret  by  a 
former  leader  of  the  liberal  party,  whom  he  had  be- 
friended, a  man  of  the  name  of  Jasper. 

It  is  probable  that  the  seven  years  Beddoes  spent  at 
Zurich  formed  the  happiest  portion  of  his  life.  He  was 
never  to  experience  tranquillity  again.  The  next  few- 
years  were  spent  in  what  seems  an  aimless  wandering 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  Central  Europe.  Little 
is  known  of  his  history  from  this  time  forward.  In  1841 
he  was  in  Berlin,  where  he  formed  an  acquaintanceship 
with  a  young  Dr.  Frey,  who  remained  his  intimate  friend 
to  the  last.  In  1842  he  made  a  brief  visit  to  England. 
In  1843  he  went  to  Baden  in  Aargau,  where  he  seems 
to  have  stored  his  library,  and,  so  far  as  Beddoes 
henceforth  could  be  said  to  have  a  home,  that  home 
was  in  this  little  town  of  Northern  Switzerland,  not 
far  from  Zurich.  He  spent  the  winter  of  1844  at 
Giessen,  attracted  thither  by  Liebig  and  his  famous 
school  of  chemistry,  after  having  lodged  through  the 
summer  and  autumn  at  Basel,  Strassburg,  Mannheim, 
Mainz,  and  Frankfurt  in  succession.  At  Giessen  a 
little  of  the  poetic  fervour  returned  to  him,  and  it  was 
here  that  he  wrote  "  The  Swallow  leaves  her  Nest,"  and 
"  In  Lover's  Ear  a  wild  Voice  cried."     But  most  of  his 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  45 

verse  now  was  written  in  German.  He  says  (Nov. 
13,  1844):  "Sometimes  to  amuse  myself  I  write  a 
German  lyric  or  epigram,  right  scurrilous,  many  of 
which  have  appeared  in  the  Swiss  and  German  papers, 
and  some  day  or  other  I  shall  have  them  collected  and 
printed  for  fun."  It  is  needless  to  say  that  he  never 
issued  this  collection,  and  the  German  poems,  doubtless 
signed  with  a  pseudonym  or  else  anonymous,  have 
never  been  traced. 

In  August,  1846,  he  came  to  England  for  a  consider- 
able stay.  Intending  to  remain  six  weeks,  he  loitered 
on  for  ten  months.  His  friends,  few  of  whom  had 
seen  him  for  more  than  twenty  years,  found  him 
altered  beyond  all  recognition.  He  had  become  ex- 
tremely rough  and  cynical  in  speech,  and  eccentric  in 
manners.  I  am  informed  by  a  member  of  his  family 
that  he  arrived  at  the  residence  of  one  of  his  relations, 
Cheney  Longville,  near  Ludlow,  astride  the  back  of  a 
donkey.  He  complained  of  neuralgia,  and  for  six  out 
of  the  ten  months  which  he  spent  in  England,  he  was 
shut  up  in  a  bedroom,  reading  and  smoking,  and  ad- 
mitting no  visitor.  In  April,  1847,  he  went  down  to 
Fareham,  to  stay  with  Mr.  Kelsall,  and  this  greatly 
brightened  him  up.  From  Fareham  he  proceeded  in 
May  to  London,  and  there  he  met  with  his  old  friends 
the  Procters.  From  Mrs.  Procter  the  present  writer 
received  a  graphic  account  of  his  manners  and  appear- 
ance. She  told  me  that  his  eccentricities  were  so 
marked  that  they  almost  gave  the  impression  of  in- 
sanity, but  that  closer  observation  showed  them  to  be 


46  Critical  Kit-Kats 

merely  the  result  of  a  peculiar  fancy,  entirely  unaccus- 
tomed to  restraint,  and  of  the  occasional  rebound  of 
spirits  after  a  period  of  depression.  The  Procters 
found  Beddoes  a  most  illusive  companion.  He  would 
come  to  them  uninvited,  but  never  if  he  had  been 
asked,  or  if  he  feared  to  meet  a  stranger.  On  one 
occasion,  Mrs.  Procter  told  me,  they  had  asked  Beddoes 
to  dine  with  them,  and  proceed  afterwards  to  Drury 
Lane  Theatre.  He  did  not  come,  and  the}-  dined  alone. 
On  approaching  the  theatre,  they  saw  Beddoes  in 
charge  of  the  police,  and  on  inquiry  found  that  he  had 
just  been  arrested  for  trying  to  put  Drur}'  Lane  on  fire. 
The  incendiary,  however,  had  used  no  more  dangerous 
torch  than  a  five-pound  note,  and  Mr.  Procter  had 
little  difficulty  in  persuading  the  police  that  this  was 
much  more  likely  to  hurt  the  pocket  of  Mr.  Beddoes 
than  the  rafters  of  the  theatre. 

In  June,  1847,  Beddoes  returned  to  Frankfurt,  where 
he  lived  until  the  spring  of  1848  with  a  baker  named 
Degen,  who  was  then  about  nineteen  years  of  age — 
"  a  nice-looking  young  man  dressed  in  a  blue  blouse, 
fine  in  expression,  and  of  a  natural  dignity  of  manner," 
Miss  Zoe  King  describes  him.  While  Beddoes  was  in 
Frankfurt  his  blood  became  poisoned  from  the  virus  of 
a  dead  body  entering  a  slight  wound  in  his  hand.  This 
was  overcome,  but  it  greatly  weakened  and  depressed 
him.  For  six  months  he  would  see  no  one  but  Degen. 
He  complained  of  disgust  of  life,  and  declared  that  his 
republican  friends  in  Germany  had  deserted  him.  He 
persuaded  Degen  to  become  an  actor,  and  he  occupied 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes 


himself  in  teaching  him  Enghsh  and  other  accomplish- 
ments, cutting  himself  off  from  all  other  company.  At 
this  time  "  he  had  let  his  beard  grow,  and  looked  like 
Shakespeare."  In  May,  1848,  he  left  Frankfurt,  in- 
ducing Degen  to  accompany  him,  and  the  two  com- 
panions wandered  together  through  Germany  and 
Switzerland.  In  Zurich  Beddoes  chartered  the  theatre 
for  one  night,  to  give  his  friend  an  opportunity  of 
appearing  in  the  part  of  Hotspur. 

For  about  six  weeks,  so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  discover, 
Beddoes  was  tolerably  happy.  But  he  was  separated 
from  Degen  at  Basel,  where  Beddoes  took  a  room,  in  a 
condition  of  dejected  apathy  that  was  pitiful  to  witness, 
at  the  Cicogne  Hotel,  Here  very  early  next  morning 
he  inflicted  a  deep  wound  on  his  right  leg,  with  a  razor. 
"  II  etait  miserable — il  a  voulu  se  tuer,"  as  the  waiter 
who  attended  upon  him  said  afterwards  to  Miss  Zoe 
King.  He  was,  however,  removed  with  success  to  the 
Town  Hospital,  where  his  friends  Dr.  Frey  and  Dr. 
Ecklin  waited  upon  him.  He  had  a  pleasant  private 
room,  looking  into  a  large  garden.  He  communicated 
with  his  English  friends,  being  very  anxious  to  allay 
all  suspicion.  He  wrote  to  his  sister :  "  In  July  I  fell 
with  a  horse  in  a  precipitous  part  of  the  neighbouring 
hills,  and  broke  my  left  leg  all  to  pieces."  He  begged 
no  one  in  England  to  be  anxious,  and  his  version  of 
the  catastrophe  was  accepted  without  question.  The 
leg,  however,  was  obstinate  in  recovery,  for  the  patient 
stealthily  tore  off  the  bandages,  and  eventually  gan- 
grene of  the  foot  set  in.     On  the  9th  of  September  it 


48  Critical  Kit-Kats 

became  necessary  to  amputate  the  leg  below  the  knee- 
joint  ;  this  operation  was  very  successfully  performed 
by  Dr.  Ecklin.  Beddoes  seems  to  have  been  cheerful 
during  the  autumn  months,  and  Degen  came  back  to 
Base],  lodging  near  him  in  the  town.  The  poet  gave 
up  all  suicidal  attempts,  and  it  was  considered  that  his 
mind  on  this  matter  was  completely  cured.  His  bed 
was  covered  with  books,  and  he  conversed  and  wrote 
freely  about  literature  and  science.  He  talked  of 
going  to  Italy  when  he  was  convalescent,  and  in  De- 
cember he  walked  out  of  his  room  twice.  The  first 
time  he  went  out  into  the  town,  however,  on  the  26th 
of  January,  1849,  he  seems  to  have  used  his  authority 
as  a  physician  to  procure  the  deadly  poison  called 
Kurara ;  in  the  course  of  the  evening  Dr.  Ecklin  was 
suddenly  called  to  his  bedside,  and  found  the  poet 
lying  on  hrs  back  insensible,  with  the  following  extra- 
ordinary note,  written  in  pencil,  folded  on  his  bosom. 
It  was  addressed  to  one  of  the  oldest  of  his  English 
friends,  Mr.  R.  Phillips : 

"  My  dear  Phillips, — I  am  food  for  what  I  am  good 
for — worms.  I  have  made  a  will  here,  which  I  desire 
to  be  respected  ;  and  add  the  donation  of  ;£"20  to  Dr. 
Ecklin  my  physician.  W.  Beddoes  must  have  a  case 
(50  bottles)  of  Champagne  Moet  1847  growth  to  drink 
my  death  in.  Thanks  for  all  kindnesses.  Borrow  the 
;^200.  You  are  a  good  and  noble  man,  and  your 
children  must  Idok  sharp  to  be  like  you. — Yours,  if  my 
own,  ever  "  T.  L.  B. 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  49 

"Love  to  Anna,  Henry, — the  Beddoes  of  Longvill 
and  Zoe  and  Emmeline  King,  Also  to  Kelsall,  whom 
I  beg  to  look  at  my  MSS.  and  print  or  not  as  he  thinks 
fit.  I  ought  to  have  been,  [among  a]  variety  of  other 
things,  a  good  poet.  Life  was  too  great  a  bore  on  one 
peg,  and  that  a  bad  one.  Buy  for  Dr.  Ecklin  above 
mentioned  Reade's  best  stomach-pump." 

He  died  at  10  p.m.  the  same  night,  and  was  buried 
under  a  cypress  in  the  cemetery  of  the  hospital.  The 
circumstances  of  his  death,  now  for  the  first  time  pub- 
lished, were  ascertained  by  Miss  Zoe  King,  who  visited 
Basel  in  1857,  ^^^  saw  Degen,  Frey,  Ecklin,  and  the 
people  at  the  Cicogne  Hotel.  After  some  delay,  the 
various  MSS.  of  Beddoes  were  placed  in  Kelsall's  hands, 
and  that  faithful  and  admirable  friend  published  that 
version  of  DeatJUs  Jcsthook^  which  seemed  to  him  the 
most  attractive,  in  1850  ;  and  this  he  followed,  in  1 85 1, 
by  the  Miscellaneous  Poems,  with  an  unsigned  Memoir. 
These  two  volumes  form  the  only  monument  hitherto 
raised  to  the  memory  of  the  unfortunate  poet.  The 
reception  which  was  given  to  them  was  respectful,  and 
even  sympathetic.  It  may  be  sufficient  here  to  give 
one  instance  of  it,  which  has  never  been  made  public. 
Miss  Zoe  King,  in  an  unprinted  letter  to  Kelsall, 
says:  "I  was  at  the  Lakes  with  my  uncle  Edge- 
worth  just  after  receiving  the  Death's  Jestbook,  and 
was  very  much  pleased  to  lend  it  to  Mr.  Tenny- 
son. He  was  just  arrived  (^and  at  a  distance  from  us) 
on  his  weddmg  tour,  so  that   1   merely  saw  him.     He 

D 


50  Critical  KIt-Kats 

returned  the  booii  witn  a  few  lines  ot  praise,  rating  it 
highly." 

Ill 

It  is  not  in  the  fragments  that  Beddoes  has  left 
behind  him  that  we  can  look  for  the  work  of  a  full- 
orbed  and  serene  poetical  genius.  It  would  be  a  narrow 
definition  indeed  of  the  word  "  poet  "  which  should 
exclude  him,  but  he  belongs  to  the  secondary  order  of 
makers.  He  is  not  one  of  those  whose  song  flows  un- 
bidden from  their  lips,  those  born  warblers  whom 
neither  poverty,  nor  want  of  training,  nor  ignorance, 
can  restrain  from  tuneful  utterance.  He  belongs  to 
the  tribe  of  scholar-poets,  to  the  educated  artists  in 
verse.  In  every  line  that  he  wrote  we  can  trace  the 
influence  of  existing  verse  upon  his  mind.  He  is 
intellectual  rather  than  spontaneous.  Nor,  even  within 
this  lower  range,  does  his  work  extend  far  on  either 
hand.  He  cultivates  a  narrow  field,  and  his  impressions 
of  life  and  feeling  are  curiously  limited  and  monotonous. 
At  the  feast  of  the  Muses  he  appears  bearing  little 
except  one  small  savoury  dish,  some  cold  preparation, 
we  may  say,  of  olives  and  anchovies,  the  strangeness 
of  which  has  to  make  up  for  its  lack  of  importance. 
Not  every  palate  enjoys  this  hors  dceuvre^  and  when 
that  is  the  case,  Beddoes  retires  ;  he  has  nothing  else 
to  give.  He  appeals  to  a  few  literary  epicures,  who, 
however,  would  deplore  the  absence  of  this  oddly 
flavoured  dish  as  mucn  as  thai  of  any  more  important 
piece  de  resistance. 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  51 

As  a  poet,  the  great  defect  of  Beddoes  has  already 
been  indicated — his  want  of  sustained  invention,  his 
powerlessness  in  evolution.  He  was  poor  just  where, 
two  hundred  years  earlier,  almost  every  playwright  in 
the  street  had  been  strong,  namely,  in  the  ability  to 
conduct  an  interesting  story  to  a  thrilling  and  appro- 
priate close.  From  this  point  of  view  his  boyish  play, 
77!^  Brides^  Tragedy,  is  his  only  success.  In  this 
case  a  story  was  developed  with  tolerable  skill  to  a 
dramatic  ending.  But,  with  one  exception,  he  never 
again  could  contrive  to  drag  a  play  beyond  a  certain 
point ;  in  the  second  or  third  act  its  wings  would  droop, 
and  it  would  expire,  do  what  its  master  would.  These  un- 
finished tragedies  were  like  those  children  of  Polynesian 
dynasties,  anxiously  trained,  one  after  another,  in  the 
warm  Pacific  air,  yet  ever  doomed  to  fall,  on  the  borders 
of  manhood,  by  the  breath  of  the  same  mysterious 
disease.  Death'' s  Jestbook  is  but  an  apparent  exception. 
This  does  indeed  appear  in  the  guise  of  a  finished  five- 
act  play ;  but  its  completion  was  due  to  the  violent 
determination  of  its  author,  and  not  to  legitimate 
inspiration.  For  many  years,  in  and  out  of  season, 
Beddoes,  who  had  pledged  his  whole  soul  to  the  finish- 
ing of  this  book,  assailed  it  with  all  the  instruments  of 
his  art,  and  at  last  produced  a  huge  dramatic  Franken- 
stein monster,  which,  by  adroit  editing,  could  be  forced 
into  the  likeness  of  a  tragedy.  But  no  play  in  literature 
was  less  of  a  spontaneous  creation,  or  was  fumier  from 
achieving  the  ideal  of  growing  like  a  tree.       ' 

From  what  Beddoes  was  not,  however,  it  is  time  to 


52  Critical  Kit-Kats 

pass  to  what  he  was.  In  several  respects,  then,  he  was  a 
poetical  artist  of  consummate  ability.  Of  all  the  myriad 
poets  and  poeticules  who  have  tried  to  recover  the  lost 
magic  of  the  tragic  blank  verse  of  the  Elizabethans, 
Beddoes  has  come  nearest  to  success.  If  it  were  less 
indifferent  to  human  interests  of  every  ordinary  kind, 
the  beauty  of  his  dramatic  verse  would  not  fail  to  fasci- 
nate. To  see  how  strong  it  is,  how  picturesque,  how 
admirably  fashioned,  we  have  only  to  compare  it  with 
what  others  have  done  in  the  same  style,  with  the  tragic 
verse,  for  instance,  of  Barry  Cornwall,  of  Talfourd,  of 
Home.  But  Beddoes  is  what  he  himself  has  called  "a 
creeper  into  worm-holes."  He  attempts  nothing  per- 
sonal ;  he  follows  the  very  tricks  of  Marston  and  Cyril 
Tourneur  like  a  devoted  disciple.  The  passions  with 
which  he  deals  are  remote  and  unfamiliar ;  we  may  go 
further,  and  say  that  they  are  positively  obsolete. 

In  another  place  I  have  compared  Beddoes  in  poetry 
with  the  Helsche  Breughel  in  painting.  He  dedi- 
cates himself  to  the  service  of  Death,  not  with  a  brood- 
ing sense  of  the  terror  and  shame  of  mortality,  but  from 
a  love  of  the  picturesque  pageantry  of  it,  the  majesty  and 
sombre  beauty,  the  swift,  theatrical  transitions,  the 
combined  elegance  and  horror  that  wait  upon  the  sudden 
decease  of  monarchs.  His  medical  taste  and  training 
encouraged  this  tendency  to  dwell  on  the  physical 
aspects  of  death,  and  gave  him  a  sort  of  ghastly 
familiarity  with  images  drawn  from  the  bier  and  the 
charnel-house.  His  attitude,  however,  though  cold  and 
cynical,  was  always  distinguished,  and  in  his  wildest 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  53 

flights  of  humour  he  commonly  escapes  vulgarity.  In 
this  he  shows  himself  a  true  poet.  As  we  read  his  singular 
pages,  we  instinctively  expect  to  encounter  that  touch  of 
prose  which,  in  Landor's  phrase,  will  precipitate  the 
whole,  yet  it  never  comes.  Beddoes  often  lacks  inspi- 
ration, but  distinction  he  can  never  be  said  to  lack. 

As  a  lyrist  he  appears,  on  the  whole,  to  rank  higher 
than  as  a  dramatist.  Several  of  his  songs,  artificial  as 
they  are,  must  always  live,  and  take  a  high  place  in  the 
literature  of  artifice.  As  a  writer  of  this  class  of  poem 
his  experience  of  the  Elizabethans  was  further  kindled 
and  largely  modified  by  the  example  of  Shelley.  Never- 
theless his  finest  songs  could  never  be  taken  for  the 
work  of  Shelley,  or,  indeed,  attributed  to  any  hand  but 
his  own.  Among  them,  the  song  in  Torrismond  is 
perhaps  the  sweetest  and  the  most  ingenious : 

How  many  times  do  I  love  thee,  dear  ! 
Tell  me  how  many  thoughts  there  be 
In  the  atmosphere 
Of  a  new  falPn  year 
Whose  white  and  sable  hours  appear 

The  latest  fiake  of  Eternity  : 
So  many  times  do  I  love  thee,  dear. 

How  many  times  do  I  love,  again  ! 
Tell  me  how  many  beads  there  are 
In  a  silver  chain 
Of  evening  rain, 
Unravelled  from  the  tumbling  main, 

And  threading  the  eye  of  a  silver  star  : 
Se  many  times  do  I  love,  again. 


54 


Critical  Kit-Kats 


Dream  Pedlary  the  most  exquisite  : 

DREAM-PEDLARY. 

If  there  were  dreams  to  sell. 

What  would  you  buy  ? 
Some  cost  a  passing  hell^ 

Some  a  light  sigh, 
That  shakes  from  Life's  fresh  crown 
Only  a  rose  leaf  down. 
If  there  were  dreams  to  sell. 
Merry  and  sad  to  tell. 
And  the  crier  rung  the  hell^ 

What  would  you  buy  ? 

A  cottage  lone  and  still  ' 

With  bowers  nigh. 
Shadowy,  my  woes  to  still 

Until  I  die : 
Such  pearl  from  Lifers  fresh  crown 
Fain  would  I  shake  me  down  : 
Were  dreams  to  have  at  willy 
2 his  taould  best  heal  my  ill, 

This  would  I  buy. 

The  Song  of  the  Stygian  Naiades  and  Old  Adam,  the 
Carrion  Crow,  are  instances  of  fancy  combined  with 
grisly  humour,  of  a  class  in  which  Beddoes  has  no  Eng- 
lish competitor.  The  Harpagus  ballad  in  the  fourth  act 
of  DeatKs  Jestbook,  and  "  Lord  Alcohol,"  which  I  printed 
for  the  first  time  in  1890,  are  less  known,  but  no  less 
vivid  and  extraordinary.     The  former  of  these  closes 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  ^^ 

in  fierce  stanzas,  which   Robert  Browning  almost  ex- 
travagantly admired,  and  was  never  weary  of  reciting: 

From  the  old  supper-giver's  poll, 

He  tore  the  many-kingdo7ned  mitre  ; 
1o  him,  who  cost  him  his  son's  soul. 

He  gave  it ;  to  the  Persian  fighter: 
And  quoth. 
Old  art  thou,  but  a  fool  in  blood: 

If  thou  hast  made  me  eat  my  son, 
Cyrus  has  ta'en  his  grandsire's  food ; 

There's  kid  for  child,  and  who  hath  won  ? 

All  kingdomless  is  thy  old  head. 

In  which  began  the  tyrannous  fun  ; 
Thou^rt  slave  to  him,  who  should  be  dead ; 

Iheris  kid  Jor  child,  and  who  hath  won  ? 

Beddoes  possesses  great  sense  of  verbal  melody,  a 
fastidious  ear,  and  considerable,  though  far  from  fault- 
less, skill  in  metrical  architecture.  His  boyish  volume, 
called  The  Improvisatore,  shows,  despite  its  crudity,  that 
these  gifts  were  early  developed.  To  say  more  in 
recommendation  of  Beddoes  were  needless.  Those 
readers  who  are  able  to  take  pleasure  in  poetry  so  grim, 
austere,  and  abnormal,  may  safely  be  left  to  discover 
his  specific  charms  for  themselves. 

1S90. 


^6  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Bibliographical  Note. 

During  his  own  lifetime,  with  the  exception  of  a  few 
brief  contributions  to  periodicals,  Beddoes  published 
nothing  but  two  small  volumes.  One  of  these  was 
The  Improvisalore,  issued  at  Oxford  in  1821,  and  so 
successfully  suppressed  by  its  author,  that  not  more 
than  five  or  six  copies  are  known  to  exist.  It  was 
reprinted  for  the  first  time  in  my  1890  edition,  from  a 
copy  in  the  collection  of  Mr.  J.  Dykes  Campbell.  The 
other  was  The  Brides*  Tragedy,  published  by  the 
Rivingtons  in  1 822.  This  is  rare,  though  by  no 
means  so  inaccessible  as  its  predecessor.  A  second 
edition  appeared  in  185 1.  This  play  I  reprinted  from 
a  copy  of  the  1822  original  in  my  own  library. 

At  the  time  of  Beddoes'  death  in  1849  the  bulk  of 
his  MSS.  remained  inedited.  He  specially  bequeathed 
his  papers  and  the  disposal  of  them  to  Thomas  Forbes 
Kelsall,  a  solicitor  at  Fareham,  who  was  the  oldest  and 
the  most  intimate  of  his  English  friends.  The  family 
of  the  poet,  whose  knowledge  of  him  had  grown  very 
slight,  were  at  first  exceedingly  undesirous  that  his 
poetic  MSS.  should  be  preserved,  although  they  were 
willing  to  pay  for  the  publication  of  any  scientific 
writings.  Their  repugnance  was  finally  overcome,  and 
in  1850  Kelsall  published,  in  a  thin  volume.  Death's 
Jestbook.  The  editing  of  this  poem  was  no  light  task, 
for  no  fewer  than  three  distinct  texts,  differing  very 
considerably  between  themselves,  were  found  to  exist. 
Kelsall  collated  these  three  versions,  and  produced  a 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  ^y 

selected  text  of  his  own,  to  which  I  in  the  main  ad- 
hered. If  the  interest  in  Beddoes  should  continue  to 
grow,  it  will  always  be  possible  to  produce  a  variorum 
edition  of  Death's  Jestbook^  a  demand  for  which,  how- 
ever, is  hardly  to  be  expected. 

In  185 1  Kelsall  collected  the  miscellaneous  poems 
and  dramatic  fragments  into  a  volume  entitled  Poems 
by  the  late  Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes^  to  which  he  prefixed 
an  anonymous  memoir  of  the  poet,  which  is  a  model  of 
loving  care  and  respect  for  the  memory  of  the  departed  ; 
a  man  of  whom  it  might  then  be  said  with  unusual  truth, 
that  he  was  a  bard  **  whom  there  were  none  to  praise 
and  very  few  to  love."  The  result  of  Kelsall's  zeal  was 
that,  for  the  first  time,  the  poetry  of  Beddoes  began  to 
excite  attention.  Of  Death's  Jestbook  very  few  copies 
had  been  sold,  and  it  is  extremely  rare  in  that  original 
condition.  The  sheets  of  this  and  of  the  Poems  were 
rebound,  with  a  new  title-page  ("  The  Poems,  posthu- 
mous and  collected,  of  Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes"),  185 1, 
in  two  volumes,  to  the  second  of  which  The  Brides' 
Tragedy  was  added.  In  this  form  Beddoes  is  usually 
known  to  collectors,  but  even  these  volumes  are  now 
difficult  to  procure.  The  remainder  of  them  was  dis- 
persed by  auction  in  1855,  since  which  time  until  1890 
Beddoes  was  out  of  print. 

In  1853  Miss  Zoe  King,  Beddoes'  cousin,  wrote  to 
Kelsall :  "  I  do  not  know  whether  I  mentioned  to  you 
the  high  terms  of  praise  with  which  both  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Browning  spoke  of  the  poems,  just  as  they  were  pub- 
lished,"    Miss  Zoe  King  preserved  a  romantic  interest 


58  Critical  Kit-Kats 

in  T.  L.  Beddoes,  although  she,  like  every  other  mem- 
ber of  his  family,  knew  very  little  indeed  about  him 
personally.  She  wrote  to  Kelsall  :  "  I  could  give  you 
very  little  information  of  my  early  reminiscences  of  my 
poor  Cousin,  as  I  was  so  much  in  awe  of  his  reserve 
and  of  his  talents  that  I  seldom  conversed  with  him." 
It  was,  nevertheless.  Miss  King  for  whom  Kelsall  pre- 
served the  highest  consideration,  and  her  wishes  were 
consulted  in  the  next  step  which  he  took.  He  had 
religiously  preserved  every  scrap  of  Beddoes'  writing, 
and  was  anxious  that  these  MSS.  should  be  kept 
together.  In  consequence  of  Miss  King's  report  of  the 
admiration  which  the  Brownings  felt  for  Beddoes,  and 
the  fact  that  Robert  Browning  was  the  only  English 
poet  younger  than  himself  in  whom  Beddoes  took  any 
interest,  Kelsall  made  up  his  mind  to  make  him  the 
repository  of  the  MSS.  But  he  did  not  know  him. 
Towards  the  close,  however,  of  Bryan  Waller  Procter's 
life — I  think  in  1866  or  1867 — Browning  and  Kelsall 
met  at  his  house  on  one  single  occasion,  and  the  latter 
then  stated  his  request. 

It  is  now  proper  to  give  the  text  of  the  papers  by 
which  Kelsall  made  the  transfer  of  the  Beddoes  MSS. 


"Fareham,  Sept.  30,  1869. 

"  It  is  my  wish  that  after  my  death,  when  and  so 
soon  as  my  wife  may  think  proper,  the  whole  of  the 
Beddoes  MSS.  and  papers  should  be  transferred  to  Mr. 
Robert  Browning,  who  has  consented   to   accept   the 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  59 

charge.  It  is  most  desirable,  however,  that  she  should 
look  through  them  and  remove  the  extraneous  matter, 
as  there  are  letters  of  other  people,  accounts,  &c., 
which  only  swell  the  bulk  without  increasing  the  in- 
terest. Mr.  Browning  is  to  have  Miss  King's  Journal 
from  Switzerland  and  such  of  her  letters  as  throw  light 
on  Beddoes'  life  or  death.  As  to  the  latter,  I  have 
considered  that  my  lips  were  sealed  (relating  to  the 
suicide)  during  Miss  King's  lifetime,  since  such  was  her 
wish,  altho'  the  fact  has  been  communicated  to  me  from 
an  independent  source.  When  my  wife  and  I  went  to 
Basle  in  1868,  we  visited  Dr.  Ecklin  (Beddoes'  much- 
esteemed  physician),  and  found  that  he  had  no  doubt 
as  to  the  injuries  which  brought  Beddoes  to  the  hospital 
having  been  self-inflicted,  and  that  accident  there  was 
none. 

"  He  saw  a  good  deal  of  Beddoes  during  his  stay  at 
the  hospital  before  and  after  the  amputation,  and  con- 
sidered that  in  all  their  communications  the  origin  of 
his  situation  was  ^n  understood  fact  between  them. 
Dr.  Ecklin  added  the  startling  information  that  the  final 
catastrophe  was,  in  his  opinion,  the  direct  result  of  a 
self-administered  poison  —  all  the  symptoms  being 
otherwise  wholly  unaccountable,  and  corresponding  to 
those  appropriate  to  the  application  of  a  very  strong 
poison  called  Kurara  or  [blank  in  MS.].  He  was  evi- 
dently tired  of  life,  and  the  fact  of  his  being  so,  and 
of  having  achieved  his  release,  need  not,  after  a  fair 
allowance  for  family  hesitation,  and  in  my  opinion 
should  not,  be  withheld  from  the  knowledge  of  those 


6o  Critical  Kit-Kats 

who  take  a  deep  and  true  interest  in  Beddoes  as  a  great 

poet 

"Thos.  F.  Kelsall." 

To  this  paper  succeeded  another  : 

"  I  transfer  to  Robert  Browning  all  my  interests  and 
authority  in  and  over  the  MSS.  and  the  papers  of  or 
concerning  the  poet  Beddoes,  for  him  to  act  discre- 
tionally  for  the  honour  of  the  poet. 

"  The  greater  portion  of  these  MSS.  was  given  by 
him  to  me  in  his  life-time,  and  the  remainder  placed  at 
my  absolute  disposal  by  his  death-bed  memorandum. 

"T.  F.  Kelsall. 

"  Fareham,  June  15,  •72." 

Shortly  after  this  Mr.  Kelsall  died,  and  the  box 
containing  the  Beddoes  papers  was  transmitted  to  Mr 
Robert  Browning.  They  remained  locked  up  and 
unexamined  until,  in  July,  1883,  Mr.  Browning  invited 
me  to  help  him  in  undertaking  a  complete  investigation 
of  the  MSS.  When  we  had  reduced  them  to  some 
order,  he  lent  them  to  me,  and  I  made  such  transcripts 
and  collations  as  formed  the  basis  of  the  edition  of 
1890.  With  regard  to  the  circumstances  of  Beddoes' 
death,  which  were  then  for  the  first  time  made  public,  it 
was  Mr.  Browning's  wish  that  Kelsall's  instructions 
should  be  followed,  at  a  proper  interval  after  the  death 
of  Miss  Zoe  King,  who  was  the  last  person  to  whom 
the  statement  could  give  any  personal  pain.  Miss 
King  died  on  Sept.  28,  1881,  and  I  therefore  judged 


Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  6i 

that  the  time  had  arrived  for  carrying  out  Kelsall's 
directions.  In  1893  I  completed  the  task  which  my 
revered  friend,  Mr.  Browning,  had  laid  upon  me,  by 
printing  the  Correspondence  of  Beddoes,  in  a  single 
volume. 

In  the  preparation  of  all  these  volumes  I  received 
invaluable  aid  from  another  deeply  regretted  friend, 
Mr.  J.  Dykes  Campbell,  who  was  unequalled  and 
perhaps  unapproached  in  his  knowledge  of  the  late 
Georgian  period  of  English  poetical  history.  The  Bed- 
does  Papers  remain  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Robert 
Barrett  Browning,  who  very  kindly  lent  them  to  me 
again,  that  I  might  revise  my  collation. 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD 


Edward  FitzGerald 


In  1885  a  great  stimulus  to  curiosity  about  the  trans- 
lator of  Omar  Khayyam  was  given  by  the  double 
inscription,  prologue  and  epilogue,  ave  atque  vale,  in 
which  Lord  Tennyson  put  forth  his  Tiresias  to  the 
world  under  the  shadow  of  the  name  of  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald. The  curtain  was  for  a  moment  drawn  from 
the  personality  of  one  of  the  most  recluse  and  seques- 
tered of  modern  men  of  letters,  and  we  saw,  with  the 
eyes  of  the  Poet  Laureate,  one  of  the  earliest  and  one 
of  the  most  interesting  of  his  associates  : 

Old  Fitz,  zvho  from  your  suburb  grange^ 

Where  once  I  tarried  for  a  while y 
Glance  at  the  wheeling  orb  of  change^ 

And  greet  it  with  a  kindly  smiU  s 
Whom  yet  I  see  as  there  you  sit 

Beneath  your  sheltering  garden-tree^ 
And  watch  your  doves  about  you  fit, 

And  plant  on  shoulder,  hand  and  knee. 
Or  on  your  head  their  rosy  feet. 

As  if  they  knew  your  diet  spares 
Whatever  moved  in  that  full  sheet 

Let  down  to  Peter  at  his  prayers  f 
Who  feed  on  milk  and  meal  and  grass* 


66  Critical  Kit-Kpts 

This  dedication,  as  we  now  learn,  had  been  written 
a  week  before  FitzGerald's  death,  in  June,  1883,  when 
the  intimacy  of  the  two  poets  had  lasted  for  nearly  fifty 
years.  Other  friends,  scarcely  less  dear  or  less  ad- 
mired, had  already  preceded  FitzGerald  to  the  grave. 
Thackeray,  a  little  before  the  end,  in  reply  to  his 
daughter's  inquiry  which  of  his  old  friends  he  had 
loved  most,  had  answered,  "  Why,  dear  old  Fitz,  to  be 
sure."  Carlyle  growled  at  the  comparative  rarity  of 
"your  friendly  human  letters,"  and  a  few  more — James 
Spedding,  Thompson  of  Trinity,  Crabbe,  Bernard 
Barton — had  tempted  his  woodland  spirit  from  its  haunts. 
But  few  indeed  among  the  living  can  boast  of  having 
enjoyed  even  a  slight  personal  acquaintanceship  with 
Edward  FitzGerald,  and  almost  his  only  intimate  friend 
now  left  is  the  editor  of  the  Letters  and  Litera)y 
Remains  (Macmillan  &  Co.  :  3  vols.),  which  have  re- 
vealed even  to  those  who  had  placed  FitzGerald's 
genius  highest  and  studied  him  most  carefully  an  un- 
suspected individuality  of  great  force  and  charm.  The 
learned  an,d  accomplished  Vice-Master  of  Trinity  has 
fulfilled  his  task  in  a  manner  almost  too  modest.  He 
leaves  FitzGerald  to  speak  to  us  without  a  commentary 
from  the  pagf^s  of  his  matchless  translations  and  from 
the  leaves  of  his  scarcely  less  delightful  letters. 

Edward  Purcell  was  born  in  a  Jacobean  mansion  at 
Bredfield,  three  miles  from  Woodbridge,  in  Suffolk,  on 
the  31st  of  March,  1809.  His  father  had  married  a  Miss 
FitzGerald,  and  on  the  death  of  her  father,  in  18 18,  he 
assumed  the  name  and  arms  of  FitzGerald.    The  poet's 


Edward  FitzGerald  67 

childhood  was  spent  in  France,  but  at  the  age  of  thirteen 
he  went  to  a  school  at  Bury  St.  Edmunds,  where  the 
Speddings,  W.  B.  Donne,  and  J.  M.  Kemble  were 
among  his  schoolfellows.  In  1826  he  was  entered  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  and  in  1828  he  formed  the 
friendship  of  two  freshmen,  slightly  younger  than 
himself,  who  were  to  be  his  intimates  for  life,  W.  M. 
Thackeray  and  W.  H.  Thompson,  lately  Master  of 
Trinity.  .  He  saw  Lord  Tennyson  about  this  time, 
although  he  did  not  make  his  acquaintance  until  they 
left  college  ;  but  half  a  century  later  he  retained  a  clear 
recollection  of  the  appearance  of  the  Poet  Laureate  as 
an  undergraduate — "  I  remember  him  well,  a  sort  of 
Hyperion." 

It  is  consistent  with  all  that  we  learn  of  the  shy 
fidelity  of  FitzGerald  that  almost  all  the  friendships  of 
his  life  were  formed  before  he  was  one-and-tvventy. 
As  early  as  1830  he  warns  Thackeray  not  to  invite  him 
to  meet  anybody ;  "  I  cannot  stand  seeing  new  faces  in 
the  polite  circles  ; "  and  while  the  rest  of  the  com- 
panionship, each  in  his  own  way,  turned  to  conquer 
the  world,  FitzGerald  remained  obstinately  and  success- 
fully obscure.  In  1831  he  was  nearly  caught,  for  a 
very  delicate  and  fantastic  lyric,  published  anonymously 
in  the  Athencetan,  attracted  remark  and  was  attributed 
to  Charles  Lamb.  FitzGerald  took  a  farmhoubC  of  Ins 
father's  on  the  battle-field  of  Naseby,  and  paid  no  heed 
to  the  outstretched  hands  of  the  Sirens.  He  was  in 
easy  circumstances  and  adopted  no  profession.  The 
seat  of  his  family,  and  his  own  main  residence  until 


68  Critical  Kit-Kats 

1835,  was  Wherstead  Lodge,  a  house  beautifully  placed 
on  the  west  bank  of  the  Orwell,  about  two  miles  from 
Ipswich.  Thence  they  removed  to  a  less  attractive 
mansion,  Boulge,  near  Woodbridge,  in  the  same  county, 
close  to  the  place  of  his  birth,  and  there  FitzGerald 
resided  until  1853.  He  then  went  to  Farlingay  Hall, 
an  old  farmhouse,  where  Carlyle  visited  him;  in  i860 
he  moved  to  lodgings  in  Woodbridge,  and  in  1873  ^o 
Little  Grange,  where  he  remained  until  his  death. 
Nor,  at  first,  did  he  give  promise  of  being  more  than 
an  admirer,  a  contemplator,  even  in  the  fairy  world  of 
literature.  We  get  charming  glimpses  of  his  sympa- 
thetic nature  in  some  of  the  early  letters.  On  the  7th 
of  December,  1832,  he  says: 

"  The  news  of  this  week  is  that  Thackeray  has  come 
but  is  going  to  leave  again  for  Devonshire  directly. 
He  came  very  opportunely  to  divert  my  Blue  Devils  : 
notwithstanding,  we  do  not  see  very  much  of  each 
other :  and  he  has  now  so  many  friends  (especially  the 
Buliers)  that  he  has  no  such  wish  for  my  society.  He 
is  as  full  of  good  humour  and  kindness  as  ever.  The 
next  news  is  that  a  new  volume  of  Tennyson  is  out, 
containing  nothing  more  than  you  have  in  MS,  except 
one  or  two  things  not  worth  having 

"  I  have  been  poring  over  Wordsworth  lately,  which 
has  had  much  effect  in  bettering  my  Blue  Devils  :  for 
his  philosophy  does  not  abjure  melancholy,  but  puts  a 
pleasant  countenance  upon  it,  and  connects  it  with 
humanity.  It  is  very  well,  if  the  sensibility  that  makes 
us  fearful  of  ourselves  is  diverted  to  become  a  cause  of 


Edward  FitzGerald  69 

sympathy  and  interest  with  nature  and  mankind  :  and 
this  I  think  Wordsworth  tends  to  do.  I  think  I  told 
you  of  Shakespeare's  sonnets  before  :  I  cannot  tell  you 
what  sweetness  I  find  in  them. 

*  Se  by   Shakespeare's  sonnets  roasted,  and  Wordsworth's  poems 
basted. 
My  heart  will  be  well  toasted,  and  excellently  tasted! 

"  This  beautiful  couplet  must  delight  you,  I  think." 
In  June,  1834,  Thackeray  was  illustrating  "my 
Undine  "  (possibly  a  translation  of  Fouque's  romance) 
"  in  about  fourteen  little  coloured  drawings,  very  nicely." 
What  has  become  of  this  treasure?  In  May,  1835, 
some  of  the  friends  were  together  in  the  Lakes,  and  we 
get,  incidentally,  a  pleasant  glimpse  of  the  most  illus- 
trious of  them : 

"Alfred  Tennyson  stayed  with  me  at  Ambleside. 
Spedding  was  forced  to  go  home,  till  the  last  two  days 
of  my  stay  here.  I  will  say  no  more  of  Tennyson  than 
that  the  more  I  have  seen  of  him,  the  more  cause  I  have 
to  think  him  great.  His  little  humours  and  grumpi- 
nesses  were  so  droll,  that  I  was  always  laughing ;  and 
was  often  put  in  mind  (strange  to  say)  of  my  little  un- 
known friend,  Undine — I  must,  however,  say,  further, 
that  I  felt  what  Charles  Lamb  describes,  a  sense  of  de- 
pression at  times  from  the  overshadowing  of  a  so  much 
more  lofty  intellect  than  my  own  :  this  (though  it  may 
seem  vain  to  say  so)  I  never  experienced  before,  though 
I  have  often  been  with  much  greater  intellects  :  but  I 
could  not  be  mistaken  in  the  universality  of  his  mind ; 


JO  Critical  Kit-Kats 

and  perhaps  I  have  received  some  benefit  in  the  now 
more  distinct  consciousness  of  my  dwarfishness." 

His  time,  when  the  roses  were  not  being  pruned,  and 
when  he  was  not  making  discreet  journeys  in  uneventful 
directions,  was  divided  between  music,  which  greatly 
occupied  his  3'ounger  thought,  and  literature,  which 
slowly,  but  more  and  more  exclusively,  engaged  his 
attention.  His  loneliness,  and  the  high  standard  by 
which  in  his  remote  seclusion  he  measured  all  contem- 
porary publications,  gives  an  interest  to  his  expressions 
with  regard  to  new  books,  an  interest  which  centres 
around  himself  more,  perhaps,  than  around  the  work 
criticised.  For  instance,  he  says,  in  April,  1838,  to  the 
Quaker  poet,  Bernard  Barton,  who  was  his  neighbour 
at  Woodbridge,  and  whose  daughter  he  eventually 
married. 

"  I  am  very  heavy  indeed  with  a  kind  of  influenza, 
which  has  blocked  up  most  of  my  senses,  and  put  a  wet 
blanket  over  my  brains.  This  state  of  head  has  not 
been  improved  by  trying  to  get  through  a  new  book 
much  in  fashion — Carlyle's  French  Revolution — written 
in  a  German  style.  An  Englishman  writes  of  French 
Revolutions  in  a  German  style  1  People  say  the  book 
is  very  deep ;  but  it  appears  to  me  that  the  meaning 
seems  deep  from  l3ang  under  mystical  language.  There 
is  no  repose,  nor  equable  movement  in  it :  all  cut  up 
into  short  sentences  half  reflective,  half  narrative  ;  so 
that  one  labours  through  it  as  vessels  do  through  what 
is  called  a  short  sea — small,  contrary-going  waves  caused 
by  shallows,  and  straits,  and  meeting  tides,  &c.     I  like 


Edward  FitzGerald  71 

to  sail  before  the  wind  over  the  surface  of  an  even-roll- 
ing eloquence,  like  that  of  Bacon  or  the  Opium-Eater. 
There  is  also  pleasant  fresh-water  sailing  with  such 
writers  as  Addison.  Is  there  any  /»ow^-sailing  in  litera- 
ture ?  that  is,  drowsy,  slow,  and  of  small  compass  ? 
Perhaps  we  may  say,  some  Sermons.  But  this  is  only 
conjecture.  Certainly  Jeremy  Taylor  rolls  along  as 
majestically  as  any  of  them.  We  have  had  Alfred 
Tennyson  here,  very  droll  and  very  wayward,  and  much 
sitting  up  of  nights  till  two  and  three  in  the  morning, 
with  pipes  in  our  mouths  :  at  which  good  hour  we  would 
get  Alfred  to  give  us  some  of  his  magic  music,  which 
he  does  between  growling  and  smoking,  and  so  to  bed." 
Few  poets  have  been  able  to  prepare  for  their  life's 
work  by  so  long  and  so  dreary  a  novitiate.  In  1839 
FitzGerald  gives  Bernard  Barton  a  more  than  commonly 
full  account  of  his  daily  life.  He  goes  with  a  fellow- 
fisherman,  "  my  piscator,"  two  miles  off  to  fish,  and  has 
tea  in  a  pothouse,  and  so  walks  home.  "  For  all  which 
idle  ease,"  he  says,  **  I  think  I  must  be  damned."  Or 
else  upon  glorious  sunshiny  days  he  lies  at  full  length  in 
his  garden  reading  Tacitus,  with  the  nightingale  singing 
and  some  red  anemones  flaunting  themselves  in  the  sun. 
"A  funny  mixture  all  this;  Nero,  and  the  delicacy  of 
spring;  all  very  human,  however.  Then,  at  half-past 
one,  lunch  on  Cambridge  cream  cheese  ;  then  a  ride  over 
hill  and  dale  :  then  spudding  up  some  weeds  from  the 
grass  ;  and  then,  coming  in,  I  sit  down  to  write  to  you." 
No  wonder  thatCarlyle,  groaning  in  London  under  the 
weight  of  his  work  and  his  indigestion,  would  gird  play- 


72 


Critical  Kit-Kats 


fully  at  the  "  peaceable  man  "  at  Woodbridge,  with  his 
"  innocent /ar  niente  life."  FitzGerald  on  his  part,  was 
by  no  means  blind  to  the  seamy  side  of  the  loud  Carly- 
lean  existence,  but  wished  it  were  calmer,  and  retired  to 
his  Horace  Walpole  and  his  Tale  of  a  Tub  with  fresh 
gusto  after  being  tossed,  as  he  called  it,  on  Carlyle's 
"  canvas  waves."  After  an  unusual  burst  of  Chelsea 
eloquence,  FitzGerald  proposes  a  retreat ;  "  We  will  all 
sit  under  the  calm  shadow  of  Spedding's  forehead." 
Carlyle,  meanwhile,  after  growing  better  acquainted  with 
FitzGerald,  to  whom  Thackeray  had  first  presented  him, 
became  even  more  attached  to  him,  and  visiting  him, 
they  scraped  for  human  bones  together  in  the  Naseby 
battle-field.  Here  is  a  scrap  from  a  letter  of  Carlyle  to 
FitzGerald,  dated  October  i6,  1844  : 

"  One  day  we  had  Alfred  Tennyson  here  ;  an  unfor- 
gettable day.  He  stayed  with  us  till  late ;  forgot  his 
stick  :  we  dismissed  him  with  Macpherson's  Farewell. 
Macpherson  (see  Burns)  was  a  Highland  robber ;  he 
played  that  Tune,  of  his  own  composition,  on  his  way 
to  the  gallows ;  asked,  '  If  in  all  that  crowd  the  Mac- 
pherson had  any  clansman  ?  '  holding  up  the  fiddle  that 
he  might  bequeath  it  to  some  one.  *  Any  kinsman,  any 
soul  that  wished  him  well?  '  Nothing  answered,  nothing 
durst  answer.  He  crushed  the  fiddle  under  his  foot, 
and  sprang  off.  The  Tune  is  rough  as  hemp,  but  strong 
as  a  lion.  I  never  hear  it  without  something  of  emotion 
— poor  Macpherson  ;  though  the  artist  hates  to  play  it. 
Alfred's  dark  face  grew  darker,  and  I  saw  his  lip  slightly 
quivering  1 " 


Edward  FitzGerald  73 

The  life  that  slipped  away  at  Woodbridge  in  a  reverie 
so  graceful  and  so  roseate  was  not  undisturbed  from 
time  to  time  by  voices  from  the  outer  world  calling  it  to 
action ;  but  through  a  long  series  of  years  the  appeal 
was  resolutely  put  by.  When  almost  all  his  friends 
were  writers  it  could  not  be  but  that  FitzGerald  was  con- 
scious of  a  tendency  to  write,  and  there  are  signs  in  his 
correspondence  of  an  occasional  yielding  to  the  ten- 
dency. But  in  all  these  early  years  he  was  never  har- 
assed by  what  he  describes  as  "  the  strong  inward  call, 
the  cruel-sweet  pangs  of  parturition/'  which  he  observed 
with  the  curiosity  of  a  physician,  in  the  spirits  of  Tenny- 
son and  Thackeray.  He  knew  very  well  that  he  had 
the  power,  if  he  chose,  to  pour  out  volume  after  volume, 
like  others  of  the  mob  of  gentlemen  who  write  with  ease ; 
but  his  belief  was  that,  **  unless  a  man  can  do  better,  he 
had  best  not  do  at  all."  It  is  in  1847  that  we  find  him, 
as  a  lucky  discovery  of  Mr.  Aldis  Wright's  informs  us, 
plunging  for  the  first  time,  though  with  the  cryptic 
anonymity  which  he  would  continue  to  observe,  into 
print.  When  Singer  published  his  edition  of  Selden's 
Table  Talk  in  that  year,  the  illustrative  matter  was  con- 
tributed by  a  gentleman  whom  the  editor  was  not  per- 
mitted to  name.  Mr.  Aldis  Wright  has  found  the  originals 
of  these  notes  in  FitzGerald's  handwriting.  Two  years 
later  he  set  his  initials  at  the  foot  of  a  desultory  memoir 
of  Bernard  Barton,  prefixed  to  the  subscription  edition 
of  the  collected  poems  of  that  mild  and  ineffectual  bard, 
who  had  died  in  the  preceding  February.  It  is  remark- 
able, however,  that  FitzGerald's  first  serious  enterprise 


74  Critical  Kit-Kats 

in  authorship  was  undertaken  so  late  as  in  his  forty- 
third  3'ear — at  an  age,  that  is  to  say,  when  most  men 
who  are  to  be  famous  in  letters  have  already  given 
copious  evidence  of  their  powers. 

FitzGerald's  first  book,  Euphranor,  was  published  by 
Pickering  in  1851,  a  modest  little  volume  not  passing 
much  beyond  the  limits  of  a  pamphlet.  It  seems  to 
have  been  the  child  of  memories  of  Cambridge  impreg- 
nated by  the  Socratic  talk  of  Spedding,  who  had 
lately  been  visiting  FitzGerald.  It  is  a  Platonic  dialogue, 
easily  cast — somewhat  in  the  manner,  one  may  say,  of 
Berkeley's  Alciphron — in  a  framework  of  landscape, 
Cambridge  courts  and  halls,  the  river,  the  locks,  the 
deep  breeze  blowing  through  the  mays  and  the  labur- 
nums. The  characters  discuss  the  Godefridus  of  Sir 
Kenelm  Digby,  and  how  the  principles  of  chivalry  can 
be  wholesomely  maintained  in  modern  life.  Slight, 
perhaps,  and  notably  unambitious,  Euphranor  could 
scarcely  have  been  written  by  any  one  but  FitzGerald 
— unless,  possibly,  in  certain  moods,  by  Landor — and 
it  remains  the  most  complete  and  sustained  of  his  prose 
works.  He  had  scarcely  published  it,  and,  as  shyly  as 
Sabrina  herself,  had  peeped  from  "  the  rusliy-fringed 
bank "  of  Deben  to  see  how  the  world  received  it, 
before  he  found  himself  engaged  on  another  little 
anonymous  volume.  The  tiny  green*  1852  quarto  of 
Poloniiis  lies  before  me  at  this  moment,  a  presentation 


•  The    grass-green   cover    of    the    original  edition   reminds  us  that 
Verdad  es  siempre  verde." 


Edward  FitzGerald  75 

copy  to  the  author's  sister,  "Andalusia  De  Soyres, 
from  her  Affecte.  E.  F.  G."  It  is  a  collection  of  wise 
saws  and  modern  instances,  some  of  them  his  own, 
most  of  them  borrowed  from  Bacon,  Selden,  Kenelm 
Digby,  and,  of  the  living,  Carlyle  and  Newman,  the 
whole  graced  by  a  charming  and  most  characteristic 
preface  by  FitzGerald  himself.  And  now  he  began 
with  zeal  to  undertake  the  proper  labour  of  his  life- 
time— he  became  a  translator  of  poetry. 

Six  or  seven  years  before  this  time,  FitzGerald  was 
corresponding  on  familiar  terms  with  a  younger  friend, 
who  survives  him,  and  who  appears  to  have  been,  to  a 
very  singular  degree,  and  in  the  full  Shakespearean 
sense,  the  "only  begetter"  of  these  ensuing  transla- 
tions. This  was  Mr.  E.  B.  Cowell,  now  Professor  of 
Sanskrit  at  Cambridge.  As  early  as  1846  Mr.  Cowell 
had  introduced  FitzGerald  to  Hafiz ;  in  1852  we  find 
that  the  latter  has  "  begun  again  to  read  Calderon  with 
Cowell ; "  and  from  a  letter  written  long  afterwards  to 
the  late  Sir  Frederick  Pollock,  we  learn  that  their  first 
study  of  Calderon  dated  from  at  least  1850.  Fitz- 
Gerald cared  for  but  Httle  in  Spanish  literature.  He 
tried  some  of  the  other  dramatists — Tirso  de  Molina, 
Lope  de  Vega,  Moratin,  but  he  could  take  but  scant 
interest  in  these.  His  admiration  of  Calderon,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  inexhaustible,  and  he  began  to  work 
assiduously  at  the  task  of  translating  him,  taking  all 
Shelley's  pleasure  in  the  "starry  autos."  The  volume 
called  Six  Dramas  of  Calderon,  freely  translated  by 
Edward  FitzGerald,  was  issued  by  Pickering  in  1853, 


'jd  Critical  Kit-Kats 

and  is  the  only  one  of  all  FitzGerald's  publications 
which  bears  his  name  upon  it.  The  six  plays  are: 
The  Painter  of  his  own  Dishonour,  Keep  yotir  ozvn 
Secret,  Gil  Perez  the  Gallician,  Three  Judgments  at  a 
Blow,  The  Mayor  of  Zalanca,  and  Beware  of  Smooth 
Water.  The  book  is  now  of  extreme  scarcity,  the 
translator  having  withdrawn  it  from  circulation  in  one 
of  his  singular  fits  of  caprice,  partly,  I  believe,  on 
account  of  the  severity  with  which  its  freedom  as  a 
paraphrase  was  attacked.  I  am  bound  to  say,  however, 
that  I  find  no  traces  of  irritation  on  this  subject  in  his 
letters  of  1853,  which  refer  to  various  reviews  in  a 
very  moderate  and  sensible  spirit. 

The  Calderon  had  scarcely  passed  through  the  printer's 
hands  when  FitzGerald  took  up  the  study  of  Persian, 
still  in  company  with  and  under  the  direction  of  Mr. 
Cowell.  In  1854,  when  he  was  visiting  that  friend  at 
Oxford,  he  began  to  try  his  hand  on  a  verse  transla- 
tion of  the  Saldmdn  and  Absdl  of  Jamf,  "  whose 
ingenious  prattle  I  am  stilting  into  too  Miltonic  verse." 
This  was  published  in  1856,  anonymously,  with  a 
picturesque  "Life  of  Jami,"  and  a  curious  frontispiece 
of  warriors  playing  polo.  Meanwhile  Mr.  Cowell  was 
appointed  Professor  of  History  at  a  Calcutta  college, 
and  one  main  stimulus  to  steady  production  was  re- 
moved out  of  FitzGerald's  life.  Yet,  by  good  fortune 
for  us,  Mr.  Cowell's  absence  from  England  induced 
FitzGerald  to  write  to  him  more  fully  about  his  work 
than  he  would  have  done  if  the  friends  could  have  met. 
And  here,  on  the  20th  of  March,  1857,  we  are  allowed 


Edward  FItzGerald  77 

to  be  present  at  the  first  conception  of  what  was  after- 
wards to  become  the  famous  and  admired  Omar 
Khayyam : 

*'  To-day  I  have  been  writing  twenty  pages  of  a 
metrical  Sketch  of  the  Mantic,  for  such  uses  as  I  told 
you  of.  It  is  an  amusement  to  me  to  take  what  liberties 
I  like  with  these  Persians,  who  (as  I  think)  are  not 
poets  enough  to  frighten  one  from  such  excursions, 
and  who  really  do  want  a  little  art  to  shape  them.  I 
don't  speak  of  Jelaleddin  whom  I  know  so  little  of 
(enough  to  show  me  that  he  is  no  gre^it  artist,  how- 
ever), nor  of  Hafiz,  whose  best  is  untranslatable  because 
he  is  the  best  musician  of  words.  Old  Johnson  said 
the  poets  were  the  best  preservers  of  a  language  :  for 
people  must  go  to  the  original  to  relish  them.  I  am 
sure  that  what  Tennyson  said  to  you  is  true  :  that 
Hafiz  is  the  most  Eastern — or,  he  should  have  said, 
most  Persian — of  the  Persians.  He  is  the  best  repre- 
sentative of  their  character,  whether  his  Saki  and  wine 
be  real  or  mystical.  Their  religion  and  philosophy  is 
soon  seen  through,  and  always  seems  to  me  cuckooed 
over  like  a  borrowed  thing,  which  people,  once  having 
got,  don't  know  how  to  parade  enough.  To  be  sure, 
their  roses  and  nightingales  are  repeated  enough  ;  but 
Hafiz  and  old  Omar  Khayyam  ring  like  true  metal. 
The  philosophy  of  the  latter  is,  alas  !  one  that  never 
fails  in  the  world." 

He  was  soon  keenly  engaged  on  his  task  ;  had  in 
April  opened  up  a  correspondence  with  Garcin  de 
Tassy   about   texts   of   Omar   in    the    Paris    libraries. 


78  Critical  KIt-Kats 

This  was  the  busiest  year  of  FitzGerald's  literary  life. 
In  May  he  was  already  beginning  to  warn  his  friend  of 
another  possible  "sudden  volume  of  translations,"  the 
desire  to  conquer  a  province  of  ^Eschylus  in  his  peculiar 
way  having  seized  him.  The  onl}'  result,  however,  was 
the  preparation — but  at  what  date  I  do  not  seem  able 
to  discover — of  that  extraordinary  translation  of  the 
Agamemnon,  eventually  printed  without  name  of  author, 
title-page,  or  imprint,  in  a  hideous  cover  of  grocer's 
azure,  which  is  one  of  the  rarest  of  FitzGerald's  issues. 
In  January,  1858,  he  began  the  dismal  business  of 
trying,  and  at  first  vainly  trying,  to  find  a  publisher 
bold  enough  to  embark  on  the  perilous  enterprise  of 
printing  the  little  pamphlet  of  immortal  music  called 
The  Rubdiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam.  On  the  subject  of 
this  publication  much  has  been  loosely  said  and  con- 
jecturally  reported  of  late  years.  We  may,  therefore, 
be  glad  to  read  FitzGerald's  own  account,  in  a  letter  to 
the  late  Master  of  Trinity  : 

"  As  to  my  own  peccadilloes  in  verse,  which  never 
pretend  to  be  original,  this  is  the  story  of  Rubdiydt. 
I  had  translated  them  partly  for  Cowell :  young  Parker 
asked  me  some  years  ago  for  something  for  Fraser,  and 
I  gave  him  the  less  wicked  of  these  to  use  if  he  chose. 
He  kept  them  for  two  years  without  using  :  and  as  I 
saw  he  didn't  want  them  I  printed  some  copies  with 
Quaritch ;  and,  keeping  some  for  mj'self,  gave  him  the 
rest.  Cowell,  to  whom  I  sent  a  cop}'',  was  naturally 
alarmed  at  it ;  he  being  a  very  religious  man  :  nor  have 
I  given  any  other  copy  but  to  George  Borrow,  to  whom 


Edward  FitzGerald  79 

I  had  once  lent  the  Persian,  and  to  old  Donne  when  he 
was  down  here  the  other  day,  to  whom  I  was  showing  a 
passage  in  another  book  which  brought  my  old  Omar  up." 
On  the  15th  of  January,  1859,  as  Mr.  W.  Aldis 
Wright  has  been  kind  enough  to  ascertain  for  me, 
the  Rubdiydt  was  issued,  in  the  casual  way  above  in- 
dicated, and  fell  absolutely  flat  upon  the  market.  There 
is  no  evidence  in  FitzGerald's  correspondence  that  it 
attracted  the  smallest  attention,  and,  except  for  a  letter 
from  Mr.  Ruskin,  which  circled  the  globe  for  ten  years 
(this  sounds  incredibly  characteristic,  but  seems  to  be  true) 
before  it  reached  its  address,  the  first  publication  of  his 
magnificent  poem  appears  to  have  brought  FitzGerald  no 
breath  of  recognition  from  the  world  outside  the  circle 
of  his  friends.  The  copies  in  Mr.Quaritch's  shop  seem  to 
have  found  no  buyers,  and  to  have  gravitated  rather 
surprisingly  soon  to  the  fourpenny  boxes  outside  the 
booksellers'  stalls.  Here  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  so 
legend  relates,  discovered  the  hid  treasure  in  i860,  and 
proclaimed  it  among  his  friends,  Mr.  Swinburne  being 
forward  in  the  generous  race  to  make  the  poem  appre- 
ciated at  its  proper  value.  It  marks  a  rise  in  the 
barometer  of  popularity  that  Monckton  Milnes  (Lord 
Houghton)  is  anxiously  inquiring  for  a  copy  or  two  in 
May,  1861.  Yet  it  was  not  until  1868  that  a  second 
edition,  now  scarcely  less  rare  and  no  whit  less  in- 
teresting to  the  collector,  was  called  for.  Since  that 
time,  much  revised  by  its  far  too  careful  author,  the 
Rubdiydt  of  Omar  Khayydm  has  been  reprinted  in  all 
manner  of  shapes,  both  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  and 


8o  Critical  Kit-Kats 

on  the  other.  To  pursue  the  record  of  his  literary  Hfe, 
Fitzgerald  translated  two  more  plays  of  Calderon,  the 
Magico  prodigioso,  at  which  Shelley  had  tried  his  hand, 
and  the  Vida  es  Sueuo,  which  Trench  had  attempted. 
These  he  never  published,  but  in  1865  he  printed  them, 
without  title-page,  and  sent  the  strange  little  volume,  in  a 
grey  paper  wrapper,  to  a  few  of  his  friends.  With 
the  exception  of  the  two  (Edipus  dramas,  circulated  in 
the  same  quaint,  shy  way,  in  1880,  these  were  the  last 
of  Fitzgerald's  poetical  translations. 

He  had  grown  more  and  more  interested  in  the 
water-way  leading  from  the  pastoral  meadows  of  Wood- 
bridge  to  the  sea,  the  salt  road  between  the  trees  called 
Bawdsey  Haven,  which  brings  you,  if  you  go  far 
enough  down  it,  to  the  German  Ocean  at  last.  His 
favourite  companions  became  fishermen  and  the  cap- 
tains of  boats,  and  in  1 867  an  old  wish  was  realised  at 
length,  when  FitzGerald  became  part  owner  of  a 
herring-lugger — The  Meum  and  Tuum  as  he  called 
her,  and  possessed  a  captain  of  his  own.  Later  on, 
he  bought  a  yacht,  The  Scandal.  "  Nothing  but  ship," 
he  says,  from  June  to  November,  through  all  those 
months,  "  not  having  lain,  I  believe,  for  three  consecu- 
tive nights  in  Christian  sheets,"  but  mostly  knocking 
about  somewhere  outside  of  Lowestoft.  The  theory 
was  that  the  lugger  should  pay  her  way,  but  Fitz- 
Gerald and  his  captain,  "  a  grand,  tender  soul,  lodged 
in  a  suitable  carcase,"  did  not  make  the  profit  that  thej' 
hoped  for,  and  after  four  years  of  considerable  anxiety, 
FitzGerald  parted  from  his  boat  and  from  her  master. 


Edward  FitzGerald  8i 

The  latter  was  a  humble  friend  in  whom,  physically 
and  spiritually,  there  must  have  been  something  splen- 
didly attractive,  and  regarding  whom  FitzGerald  uses 
phraseology  otherwise  reserved  for  Tennyson  and 
Thackeray.  The  poet  still  kept  a  boat  upon  the 
Deben,  but  went  out  no  more  upon  the  deep  after 
herrings  and  mackerel,  in  company  with  his  auburn- 
haired  and  blue-eyed  giant  from  Lowestoft,  "altogether," 
he  says,  **  the  greatest  man  I  have  known." 

And  so,  almost  imperceptibly,  as  the  reader  moves 
down  the  series  of  these  delightful  letters,  he  finds 
that  the  writer,  in  his  delicate  epicureanism,  is,  without 
repining  at  it,  growing  old.  A  selection  from  his  early 
favourite  poet,  a  Suffolk  man  like  himself,  George 
Crabbe,  is  his  last  literary  enterprise,  and  so  on  the 
14th  of  June,  1883,  in  his  seventy-fifth  year,  he  rather 
suddenly  passes  away  painlessly  in  his  sleep.  His 
own  words  shall  be  his  epitaph  :  "  An  idle  fellow,  but 
one  whose  friendships  were  more  like  loves." 

The  strange  issues  of  Calderon,  of  ^Eschylus,  of 
J^mi,  of  Sophocles,  with  which  it  was  FitzGerald's 
pleasure  to  confound  bibliogi-aphers,  are  now  great 
rarities  ;  not  one  of  all  his  printed  works,  except  the 
Omar  Khayydin,  has  hitherto  been  easy  to  obtain.  We 
may  generally  say  in  looking  over  all  these  versions, 
that  FitzGerald  more  than  any  other  recent  translator 
of  poetry,  carried  out  that  admirable  rule  of  Sir  John 
Denham's,  that  the  translator's  business  is  not  "  alone 
to  translate  language  into  language,  but  poesie  into 
poesie ;   and  poesie  is  of    so   subtle  a  spirit,   that  in 


82  Critical  Kit-Kats 

pouring  out  of  one  language  into  another,  it  will  all 
evaporate,  if  a  new  spirit  be  not  added  in  the  trans- 
lation." FitzGerald's  versions  are  so  free,  he  is  so 
little  bound  by  the  details  of  his  orignal,  he  is  so 
indifferent  to  the  timid  pedantry  of  the  ordinary  writer 
who  empties  verse  out  of  the  cup  of  one  language  into 
that  of  another,  that  we  may  attempt  with  him  what 
would  be  a  futile  task  with  almost  every  other  English 
translator — we  may  estimate  from  his  versions  alone 
what  manner  of  poet  he  was. 

In  attempting  to  form  such  an  estimate  we  are  bound 
to  recognise  that  his  best-known  work  is  also  his  best. 
The  Omar  Khayyam  of  FitzGerald  takes  its  place  in 
the  third  period  of  Victorian  poetry,  as  an  original 
force  wholly  in  sympathy  with  other  forces  of  which 
its  author  took  no  personal  cognisance.  Whether  or 
no  it  accurately  represents  the  sentiments  of  a  Persian 
astronomer  of  the  eleventh  century  is  a  question  which 
fades  into  insignificance  beside  the  fact  that  it  stimu- 
lated and  delighted  a  generation  of  young  readers,  to 
whom  it  appealed  in  the  same  manner,  and  along 
parallel  lines  with,  the  poetry  of  Morris,  Swinburne, 
and  the  Rossettis.  After  the  lapse  of  thirty  years  we 
are  able  to  perceive  that  in  the  series  of  poetical  publi- 
cations of  capital  importance  which  marked  the  close  of 
the  fifties  it  takes  its  natural  place.  In  1858  appeared 
The  Defence  of  Guinevere;  in  1859,  the  Rubdiydt  of 
Omar  Khayyam;  in  i860,  The  Queen -Mother  and 
Rosamond;  in  1862,  Goblin  Market;  while,  although 
the  Poems  of  D.  G.  Rossetti  did  not  finally  see  the 


Edward  FitzGerald  83 

light  till  1870,  his  presence,  his  spiritual  influence,  had 
animated  the  group.  That  FitzGerald  was  ignorant  of, 
or  wholly  indifferent  to,  the  existence  of  these  his  com- 
peers did  not  affect  his  relationship  to  them,  nor  their 
natural  and  instinctive  recognition  of  his  imaginative 
kinship  to  themselves.  The  same  reassertion  of  the 
sensuous  elements  of  literature,  the  same  obedience  to 
the  call  for  a  richer  music  and  a  more  exotic  and  im- 
passioned aspect  of  manners,  the  same  determination 
to  face  the  melancholy  problems  of  life  and  find  a 
solace  for  them  in  art,  were  to  be  found  in  the  anony- 
mous pamphlet  of  Oriental  reverie  as  in  the  romances, 
dramas,  songs,  and  sonnets  of  the  four  younger  friends. 
So  much  more  interesting  to  us,  if  we  will  look 
sensibly  at  the  matter,  is  FitzGerald  than  the  Omar 
Khayyam  whose  mantle  he  chose  to  masquerade  in 
that  we  are  not  vexed  but  delighted  to  learn  from  Mr. 
Aldis  Wright  that  the  opening  stanza,  which  ran  thus 
in  the  edition  of  1859  : 

Awake  !  for  morning  in  the  bowl  of  night 
Has  flung  the  stone  that  puts  the  stars  to  flight ; 

And  lo  !  tl)e  hunter  of  the  East  has  caught 
T/je  Sultan's  turret  in  a  noose  of  light, 

is  wholly  his  own,  and  represents  nothing  in  the 
original.  It  was  judged  by  his  earliest  critics  to  be 
too  close  a  following  of  the  fantastic  allusiveness  of  the 
Persian,  and  the  poet — surely  with  his  tongue  set  in 
his  cheek — modified  his  own  invention  to  the  smoother 
but  less  spirited : 


84  Critical  Kit-Kats 

IVake  !  for  the  sun  behind ^on  Eastern  height 
Has  chased  the  session  of  the  stars  from  night ; 
And,  te  the  field  of  heav''n  ascending,  strikes 
Ihe  Sultanas  turret  with  a  shaft  of  light. 

It  is  well  to  remind  ourselves  of  these  two  versions, 
of  which  each  is  good,  though  the  first  be  best,  because 
FitzGerald  was  sufficiently  ill-advised  to  exchange  for 
both  a  much  tamer  version,  which  now  holds  its  place 
in  the  text.  These  alterations,  however,  are  very 
significant  to  the  critic,  and  exhibit  the  extreme  care 
with  which  FitzGerald  revised  and  re-revised  his  work. 

To  judge,  however,  of  his  manner  as  a  translator,  or 
rather  as  a  paraphraser,  we  must  examine  not  merely 
the  most  famous  and  remarkable  of  his  writings,  but 
his  treatment  of  Spanish  and  Greek  drama,  and  of  the 
narrative  of  Jami.  It  appears  that  he  took  Dryden's 
licence,  and  carried  it  further ;  that  he  steeped  himself 
in  the  language  and  feeling  of  his  author,  and  then 
threw  over  his  version  the  robe  of  his  own  peculiar 
style.  Every  great  translator  does  this  to  some  extent, 
and  we  do  not  recognise  in  Chapman's  breathless 
gallop  the  staid  and  polished  Homer  that  marches 
down  the  couplets  of  Pope.  But  then,  both  Pope  and 
Chapman  had,  in  the  course  of  abundant  original  com- 
position, made  themselves  each  the  possessor  of  a  style 
which  he  threw  without  difficulty  around  the  shoulders 
of  his  paraphrase.  In  the  unique  case  of  FitzGerald — 
since  Fairfax  can  scarcely  be  considered  in  the  same 
category — a    poet  of    no  marked  individuality  in  his 


Edward  FitzGerald  85 

purely  independent  verse  created  for  himself,  in  the 
act  of  approaching  masterpieces  of  widely  different 
race  and  age,  a  poetical  style  so  completely  his  own 
that  we  recognise  it  at  sight  as  his.  The  normal 
instances  of  this  manner  are  familiar  to  us  in  Omar 
Khayyam.  They  are  characterised  by  a  melody  which 
has  neither  the  variety  of  Tennyson  nor  the  vehemence 
of  Mr,  Swinburne,  neither  the  motion  of  a  river  nor  of 
the  sea,  but  which  rather  reminds  us,  in  its  fulness  and 
serenity,  of  the  placid  motion  of  the  surface  of  a  lake, 
or  of  his  own  grassy  estuary  of  the  Deben ;  and  finally 
by  a  voluptuous  and  novel  use  of  the  commonplaces  of 
poetry — the  rose,  the  vine,  the  nightingale,  the  moon. 
There  are  examples  of  this  typical  manner  of  FitzGerald 
to  be  found  in  Omar  Khayyam,  which  are  unsurpassed 
for  their  pure  qualities  as  poetry,  and  which  must 
remain  always  characteristic  of  what  was  best  in  a 
certain  class  of  Victorian  verse.     Such  are : 

jilas,  that  spring  should  vanish  with  the  rose  ! 
That  youth^s  sweet-scented  manuscript  should  close  s 

Ihe  nightingale  that  in  the  branches  sang. 
Ah,  whe?ice  and  whither  fiown  again,  who  knows  ! 

and  (a  gem  spoiled  in  recutting,  after  the  first  edition, 
by  the  capricious  jeweller) ; 

Thus  with  a  loaf  of  bread  beneath  the  bough, 
A  flask  of  wine,  a  book  of  verse — and  thou 

Beside  me  singing  in  the  wilderness^ 
And  wilderness  is  Paradise  enow. 


86  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Nothing  quite  so  good,  perhaps,  as  these  and  many 
more  which  might  be  quoted  from  the  Omar  Khayyam, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  other  translations,  yet  wherever 
the  latter  are  happiest  they  betray  the  same  hand  and 
murmur  the  same  accents.  It  is  in  The  Highly 
Magician  that  we  meet  with  such  characteristic  stanzas 
as  this : 

Who  that  in  his  hour  of  glory 

Walks  the  kingdom  of  the  rose^ 
And  misapprehends  the  story 

Which  through  all  the  garden  blows  f 
Which  the  southern  air  who  brivgs 
It  touches^  and  the  leafy  strings 

Lightly  to  the  touch  respond ; 
And  nightingale  to  nightingale 

Answering  on  bough  beyond-— 
Nighti?igale  to 

Answering  on 


While  the  following  passage,  perhaps  the  richest  and 
most  memorable  in  FitzGerald's  minor  writings,  is 
found  in  the  Saldmdn  and  Absdl: 

When  they  had  saiVd  their  vessel  for  a  moon^ 
And  marr'd  their  beauty  with  the  wind  o  the  sea^ 
Suddenly  in  mid-sea  revealed  itself 
An  isle,  beyond  imagination  fair  ; 
An  isle  that  was  all  garden  ;  not  a  flower. 
Nor  bird  of  plumage  like  the  flower,  but  there  g 
Some  like  the  flower,  and  others  like  the  leaf; 
Some,  as  the  pheasant  and  the  dove,  adorii'd 


Edward  FitzGerald  87 

With  crown  and  collar,  over  whom,  alone^ 
The  jewelPd  peacock  like  a  sultan  shone : 
While  the  musicians,  and  among  them  chief 
The  nightingale,  sang  hidden  in  the  trees. 
Which,  arm  in  arm,  from  fingers  quivering 
With  any  breath  of  air,  fruit  of  all  kind 
Down  scattered  in  profusion  to  their  feet. 
Where  fountains  of  sweet  water  ran  between, 
And  sun  and  shadozo  chequer-chased  the  green. 
This  Iram-garden  seemed  in  secrecy 
Blowing  the  rosebud  of  its  revelation; 
Or  Paradise,  forgetful  of  the  dazun 
Of  Audit,  lifted  from  her  face  the  veil. 

In  reading  these  sumptuous  verses  the  reader  may 
be  inclined  to  wonder  why  Saldmdn  and  Absdl  is  not 
as  widely  known  and  as  universally  admired  as  the 
Omar  Khayydm.  If  it  were  constantly  sustained  at 
anything  like  this  level  it  would  be  so  admired  and 
known,  but  it  is,  unfortunately,  both  crabbed  and 
unequal. 

It  was  in  1854,  as  FitzGerald  reminds  Professor 
Cowell  in  a  very  interesting  letter,  that  these  friends 
began  to  read  J^mi  together.  We  have  seen  that  it 
was  not  until  1856  and  after  the  completion  of  the 
Saldmdn  and  Absdl  that  the  same  friend  placed  Omar 
in  FitzGerald's  hands.  The  paraphrase  of  Jamf,  there- 
fore, is  the  earlier  of  the  two,  and  represents  the  style 
of  the  English  poet  at  a  stage  when  it  was  still 
unfinished  and,  I  think,  imperfectly  refined.  The 
narrative  of  Jami  is  diffuse,  and,  as  FitzGerald  soon 


88  Critical  Kit-Kats 

found,  "  not  line  by  line  precious ; "  he  was  puzzled 
how  to  retain  his  character  and  yet  not  permit  it  to  be 
tedious,  and  he  has  not  wholly  succeeded  in  clearing 
his  poem  from  the  second  horn  of  the  dilemma. 
The  original  text  of  1856  differs  in  almost  every  line, 
and  sometimes  essentially,  from  that  now  published  in 
FitzGerald's  work.  I  do  not  know  on  what  the  later 
text  is  founded,  but  probably  on  a  revision  found 
among  his  papers.  I  confess  that  the  bolder  early 
version  seems  to  me  considerably  the  more  poetical. 
Sd/dman  and  Absdl  consists  of  a  mystical  preliminary 
invocation,  in  which  the  problem  of  responsibility  and 
free-will,  in  the  form  which  interested  the  English 
poet  so  much,  is  boldly  stated  and  the  double  question 
put: 

If  I — this  spirit  that  inspires  me  whence  ? 
If  thou — then  what  tins  sensual  impotence  ? 

and  of  the  story,  told  in  three  parts,  with  a  moral  or 
transcendental  summing-up  at  the  close.  The  metrical 
form  chosen  for  the  main  narrative  is  blank  verse,  with 
occasional  lapses  into  rhyme.  These,  in  all  proba- 
bility, respond  to  some  peculiarity  in  the  Persian 
original,  but  they  are  foreign  to  the  genius  of  English 
prosody,  and  they  produce  an  effect  of  poverty  upon 
the  ear,  which  is  alternately  tempted  and  disappointed. 
There  are,  moreover,  incessant  interludes  or  episodical 
interpolations,  which  are  treated  in  an  ambling  measure 
of  four  beats,  something  like  the  metre  of  Hiawatha, 
but  again  with  occasional  and  annoying  introductions 


Edward  FitzGerald  89 

of  rhyme.  It  is  obvious,  at  the  outset,  that  we  do  not 
see  FitzGerald  here  exercising  that  perfect  instinct  for 
form  which  he  afterwards  developed  ;  he  was  tram- 
melled, no  doubt,  by  his  desire  to  repeat  the  effects  he 
discovered  in  the  Persian,  and  had  not  yet  asserted  his 
own  genius  in  what  Dryden  called  metaphrase.  Never- 
theless, Saldmdn  and  Absdl  contains  passages  of  great 
beauty,  such  as  that  in  which  the  poet,  in  wayward 
dejection,  confesses  that  his  worn  harp  is  no  longer 
modulated,  and  that 

Methtnks 
*Twere  time  to  break  and  cast  it  in  the  fire  : 
The  vain  old  harp,  that,  breathing  from  its  strings 
No  music  more  to  charm  the  ears  of  man. 
May,  from  its  scented  ashes,  as  it  burns. 
Breathe  resignation  to  the  harper's  soul. 

And  the  description  of  Absal,  the  lovely  infant  nurse  of 
the  new-born  Salaman  (1856  text)  : 

Her  years  not  twenty,  from  the  silver  line^ 
Dividing  the  musk-harvest  of  her  hair, 
Down  to  her  foot,  that  trampled  crowns  of  kingSf 
A  moon  of  beauty  full. 

Very  curious  and  charming,  too,  are  the  descriptions 
of  Salaman's  victory  over  the  princes  at  polo,  and  his 
headlong  ride  to  the  shore  of  the  abyss  that  was 
haunted  by  the  starry  dragon,  and  whose  island  crags 
cut  its  surface  "  as  silver  scissors  slice  a  blue  brocade." 

A  third  Persian  poem,  the  Bird-Parliament  of  Farid- 


90  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Uddi'n  Attar,  written  immediately  after  the  publication  of 
Omar  Khayyam  in  1859,  was  first  printed  by  Mr.  Aldis 
Wright  thirty  years  later,  and  forms  a  very  important 
addition  to  FitzGerald's  works.  It  is  a  long,  mystical 
piece  of  Oriental  transcendentalism,  the  best  part  of 
which  is  the  opening  pages,  in  which  the  various  birds 
are  introduced,  spreading  their  jewelled  plumage  one 
by  one  before  the  tajidar,  the  royal  lapwing,  who  is 
their  shah  or  sultan.  When  the  poem  becomes  purely 
philosophical,  it  seems  to  me  to  become  less  attractive, 
perhaps  sometimes  a  little  tedious  ;  yet  the  versification 
is  always  charming,  the  heroic  couplet  treated  as 
smoothly  and  correctly  as  by  Congreve  or  Addison,  but 
with  far  greater  richness. 

Of  FitzGerald  as  a  prose  writer  there  has  hitherto 
been  little  known.  His  correspondence  now  reveals 
him,  unless  I  am  much  mistaken,  as  one  of  the  most 
pungent,  individual,  and  picturesque  of  English  letter- 
writers.  Rarely  do  we  discover  a  temperament  so 
mobile  under  a  surface  so  serene  and  sedentary  ;  rarely 
so  feminine  a  sensibility  side  by  side  with  so  virile  an 
intelligence.  He  is  moved  by  every  breath  of  Nature ; 
every  change  of  hue  in  earth  or  air  aQ'ects  him ;  and 
all  these  are  reflected,  as  in  a  camera  obscura,  in  the 
richly-coloured  moving  mirror  of  his  letters.  It  will 
not  surprise  one  reader  of  this  correspondence  if  the 
name  of  its  author  should  grow  to  be  set,  in  common 
parlance,  beside  those  of  Gray  and  Cowper  for  the 
fidelity  and  humanity  of  his  addresses  to  his  private 
friends.    Meanwhile,  we  ought,  perhaps,  to  have  remem- 


Edward  FitzGerald  91 

bcred  what  beautiful  pages  there  were  in  Euphranor, 
and  in  particular  to  have  recalled  that  passage  about 
the  University  boat-races  which  Lord  Tennyson,  no 
easy  critic  to  satisfy,  has  pronounced  to  be  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  fragments  of  English  prose  extant.. 
Not  many  in  this  generation  have  met  with  Euphranor, 
and  I  may  quote  this  passage  with  the  certainty  that  it 
is  new  to  all  or  nearly  all  of  my  readers  : 

"Townsmen  and  gownsmen,  with  the  tassell'd 
Fellow-commoner  sprinkled  here  and  there — reading 
men  and  sporting  men — Fellows,  and  even  Masters  of 
Colleges,  not  indifferent  to  the  prowess  of  their  respec- 
tive crews — all  these,  conversing  on  all  sorts  of  topics, 
from  the  slang  in  Bell's  Life  to  the  last  new  German 
revelation,  and  moving  in  ever-changing  groups  down 
the  shore  of  the  river,  at  whose  farther  bend  was  a 
little  knot  of  ladies  gathered  up  on  a  green  knoll  faced 
and  illuminated  by  the  beams  of  the  setting  sun.  Be- 
yond which  point  was  at  length  heard  some  indistinct 
shouting,  which  gradually  increased,  until  '  They  are 
off — they  are  coming  1 '  suspended  other  conversation 
among  ourselves ;  and  suddenly  the  head  of  the  first 
boat  turned  the  corner ;  and  then  another  close  upon 
it ;  and  then  a  third ;  the  crews  pulling  with  all  their 
might  compacted  into  perfect  rhythm ;  and  the  crowd 
on  shore  turning  round  to  follow  along  with  them, 
waving  hats  and  caps,  and  cheering,  'Bravo,  St. 
John's  r  *  Go  it,  Trinity  ! ' — the  high  crest  and  blowing 
forelock  of  Phidippus's  mare,  and  he  himself  shouting 
encouragement  to  his  crew,  conspicuous  over  all — until, 


92  Critical  Kit-Kats 

the  boats  reaching  us,  we  also  were  caught  up  in  the 
returning  tide  of  spectators,  and  hutried  back  toward 
the  goal ;  where  we  arrived  just  in  time  to  see  the 
ensign  of  Trinity  lowered  from  its  pride  of  place,  and 
the  eagle  of  St  John's  soaring  there  instead.  Then, 
waiting  a  little  while  to  hear  how  the  winner  had  won, 
and  the  loser  lost,  and  watching  Phidippus  engaged  in 
eager  conversation  with  his  defeated  brethren,  I  took 
Euphranor  and  Lexilogus  under  either  arm  (Lycion 
having  got  into  better  company  elsewhere)  and  walked 
home  with  them  across  the  meadow  leading  to  the 
town,  whither  the  dusky  troops  of  gownsmen  with  all 
their  confused  voices  seemed  as  it  were  evaporating  in 
the  twilight,  while  a  nightingale  began  to  be  heard 
among  the  flowering  chestnuts  of  Jesus." 

Who  is  rashly  to  decide  what  place  may  not  finally 
be  awarded  to  a  man  capable  of  such  admirable  feats 
in  English  prose  and  verse  ?  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  when  much  contemporary  clamour  has  died  out 
for  ever,  the  clear  note  of  the  Nightingale  of  Wood- 
bridge  will  still  be  heard  from  the  alleys  of  his  Persian 
garden. 

1889. 


WALT  WHITMAN 


Walt  Whitman 

I 

r  ATIMA  was  permitted,  nay  encouraged,  to  make  use 
of  all  the  rooms,  so  elegantly  and  commodiously  fur- 
nished, in  Bluebeard  Castle,  with  one  exception.  It 
was  in  vain  that  the  housemaid  and  the  cook  pointed 
out  to  her  that  each  of  the  ladies  who  had  preceded  her 
as  a  tenant  had  smuggled  herself  into  that  one  forbidden 
chamber  and  had  never  come  out  again.  Their  sad  ex- 
perience was  thrown  away  upon  Fatima,  who  pene- 
trated the  fatal  apartment  and  became  an  object  of 
melancholy  derision.  The  little  room  called  "  Walt 
Whitman,"  in  the  castle  of  literature,  reminds  one  of 
that  in  which  the  relics  of  Bluebeard's  levity  were 
stored.  We  all  know  that  discomfort  and  perplexity 
await  us  there,  that  nobody  ever  came  back  from  it  with 
an  intelligible  message,  that  it  is  piled  with  the  bones  of 
critics  ;  yet  such  is  the  perversity  of  the  analytic  mind, 
that  each  one  of  us,  sooner  or  later,  finds  himself  peep- 
ing through  the  keyhole  and  fumbling  at  the  lock. 

As  the  latest  of  these  imprudent  explorers,  I  stand  a 
moment  with  the  handle  in  my  hand  and  essay  a  defence 
of  those  whose  skeletons  will  presently  be  discovered. 
Was  it  their  fault?     Was  their  failure  not  rather  due 


96  Critical  Kit-K2t«i 

to  a  sort  of  magic  that  hangs  over  the  place  ?  To  drop 
metaphor,  I  am  sadly  conscious  that,  after  reading  what 
a  great  many  people  of  authority  and  of  assumption 
have  written-  about  Whitman — reading  it,  too,  in  a 
humble  spirit — though  I  have  been  stimulated  and  en- 
tertained, I  have  not  been  at  all  instructed.  Pleasant 
light,  of  course,  has  been  thrown  on  the  critics  them- 
selves and  on  their  various  peculiarities.  But  upon 
Whitman,  upon  the  place  he  holds  in  literature  and  life, 
upon  the  questions,  what  he  was  and  why  he  was,  surely 
very  httle.  To  me,  at  least,  after  all  the  oceans  of  talk, 
after  all  the  extravagant  eulogy,  all  the  mad  vitupera- 
tion, he  remains  perfectly  cryptic  and  opaque.  I  find  no 
reason  given  by  these  authorities  why  he  should  have 
made  his  appearance,  or  what  his  appearance  signifies. 
I  am  told  that  he  is  ab3'smal,  putrid,  glorious,  universal 
and  contemptible.  I  like  these  excellent  adjectives, 
but  I  cannot  see  how  to  apply  them  to  Whitman.  Yet, 
like  a  boy  at  a  shooting-gallery,  I  cannot  go  home  till  I, 
too,  have  had  my  six  shots  at  this  running-deer. 

On  the  main  divisions  of  literature  it  seems  that  a 
critic  should  have  not  merely  a  firm  opinion,  but  sound 
argument  to  back  that  opinion.  It  is  a  pilgarlicky  mind 
that  is  satisfied  with  saying,  "  I  hke  you,  Dr.  Fell,  the 
reason  why  I  cannot  tell."  Analysis  is  the  art  of  telling 
the  reason  why.  But  still  more  feeble  and  slovenly  is 
the  criticism  that  has  to  say,  **  I  liked  Dr.  Fell  yester- 
day and  I  don't  like  him  to-day,  but  I  can  give  no 
reason."  The  shrine  of  Walt  Whitman,  however,  is 
strewn  around  with  remarks  of  this  kind.     Poor  Mr. 


Walt  Whitman  97 

Swinburne  lias  been  cruelly  laughed  at  for  calling  him 
a  "  strong-winged  soul,  with  prophetic  lips  hot  with  the 
blood-beats  of  song,"  and  yet  a  drunken  apple-woman 
reeling  in  a  gutter.  But  he  is  not  alone  in  this  incon- 
sistenc}'.  Almost  every  competent  writer  who  has 
attempted  to  give  an  estimate  of  Whitman  has  tumbled 
about  in  the  same  extraordinary  way.  Something 
mephitic  breathes  from  this  strange  personality,  some- 
thing that  maddens  the  judgment  until  the  wisest  lose 
their  self-control. 

Therefore,  I  propound  a  theory.  It  is  this,  that  there 
is  no  real  Walt  Whitman,  that  is  to  say,  that  he  cannot 
be  taken  as  any  other  figure  in  literature  is  taken,  as 
an  entity  of  positive  value  and  defined  characteristics, 
as,  for  instance,  we  take  the  life  and  writings  of  Racine, 
or  of  Keats,  or  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  including  the  style 
with  the  substance,  the  teaching  with  the  idiosyncrasy. 
In  these  ordinary  cases  the  worth  and  specific  weight 
of  the  man  are  not  greatly  affected  by  our  attitude 
towards  him.  An  atheist  or  a  quaker  may  contemplate 
the  writings  of  the  Bishop  of  Dromore  without  sympathy; 
that  does  not  prevent  the  Holy  Dying  from  presenting, 
even  to  the  mind  of  such  an  opponent,  certain  defined 
features  which  are  unmodified  by  like  or  dislike.  This 
is  true  of  any  fresh  or  vivid  talent  which  may  have 
appeared  among  us  yesterday.  But  I  contend  that  it 
is  not  true  of  Whitman,  Whitman  is  mere  bathybius; 
he  is  literature  in  the  condition  of  protoplasm — an  in- 
tellectual organism  so  simple  that  it  takes  the  instant 
impression  of  whatever  mood  approaches  it.     Heuce 

G 


98  Critical  Kit-Kats 

the  critic  who  touches  Whitman  is  immediately  con- 
fronted with  his  own  image  stamped  upon  that  viscid 
and  tenacious  surface.  He  finds,  not  what  Whitman 
has  to  give,  but  what  he  himself  has  brought.  And 
when,  in  quite  another  mood,  he  comes  again  to  Whit- 
man, he  finds  that  other  self  of  his  own  stamped  upon 
the  provoking  protoplasm. 

If  this  theory  is  allowed  a  moment's  consideration, 
it  cannot,  I  think,  but  tend  to  be  accepted.  It  accounts 
for  all  the  difficulties  in  the  criticism  of  Whitman.  It 
shows  us  why  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  has  found  a 
Stevenson  in  Leaves  of  Grass,  and  John  Addington 
Symonds  a  Symonds.  It  explains  why  Emerson  con- 
sidered the  book  "  the  most  extraordinary  piece  of  wit 
and  wisdom  that  America  has  yet  [in  1855]  produced;" 
why  Thoreau  thought  all  the  sermons  ever  preached 
not  equal  to  it  for  divinity ;  why  Italian  dilettanti  and 
Scandinavian  gymnasts,  anarchists  and  parsons  and 
champions  of  women's  rights,  the  most  opposite  and 
incongruous  t3'pes,  have  the  habit  of  taking  Whitman 
to  their  hearts  for  a  little  while  and  then  flinging  him 
away  from  them  in  abhorrence,  and,  perhaps,  of  draw- 
ing him  to  them  again  with  passion.  This  last,  however, 
I  think  occurs  more  rarely.  Almost  ever}''  sensitive  and 
natural  person  has  gone  through  a  period  of  fierce 
Whitmanomania ;  but  it  is  a  disease  which  rarely 
afflicts  the  same  patient  more  than  once.  It  is,  in  fact, 
a  sort  of  highly-irritated  egotism  come  to  a  head,  and 
people  are  almost  always  better  after  it. 

Unless  we  adopt  some  sucn  tneory  as  this,  it  is 


Walt  Whitman  99 

difficult  to  account  in  any  way  for  the  persistent  influ- 
ence of  Walt  Whitman's  writings.  They  have  now 
lasted  about  forty  years,  and  show  no  sign  whatever  of 
losing  their  vitality.  Nobody  is  able  to  analyse  their 
charm,  yet  the  charm  is  undeniable.  They  present  no 
salient  features,  such  as  have  been  observed  in  all  other 
literature,  from  Homer  and  David  down  to  the  latest 
generation.  They  offer  a  sort  of  Pl3'mouth  Brethren- 
ism  of  form,  a  negation  of  all  the  laws  and  ritual  of 
literature.  As  a  book,  to  be  a  living  book,  must  con- 
tain a  vigorous  and  appropriate  arrangement  of  words, 
this  one  solitary  feature  occurs  in  Leaves  oj  Grass.  I 
think  it  is  not  to  be  denied  by  any  candid  critic,  how- 
ever inimical,  that  passages  of  extreme  verbal  felicity 
are  to  be  found  frequently  scattered  over  the  pages  of 
Whitman's  rhapsodies.  But,  this  one  concession  made 
to  form,  there  is  no  other.  Not  merely  are  rhythm 
and  metre  conspicuously  absent,  but  composition, 
evolution,  vertebration  of  style,  even  syntax  and  the 
limits  of  the  English  tongue,  are  disregarded.  Every 
reader  who  comes  to  Whitman  starts  upon  an  expedi- 
tion to  the  virgin  forest.  He  must  take  his  conveni- 
ences with  him.  He  will  make  of  the  excursion  what 
his  own  spirit  dictates.  There  are  solitudes,  fresh  air, 
rough  landscape,  and  a  well  of  water,  but  if  he  wishes 
to  enjoy  the  latter  he  must  bring  his  own  cup  with 
him.  When  people  are  still  young  and  like  roughing 
it,  they  appreciate  a  picnic  into  Whitman-land,  but  it 
is  not  meant  for  those  who  choose  to  see  their  intellec- 
tual comforts  round  them. 


loo  Critical  Kit-Kats 


in  the  early  and  middle  years  of  his  life,  Whitman 
was  obscure  and  rarely  visited.  When  he  grew  old, 
pilgrims  not  unfrequently  took  scrip  and  staff,  and  set 
out  to  worship  him.  Several  accounts  of  his  appear- 
ance and  mode  of  address  on  these  occasions  have  been 
published,  and  if  I  add  one  more  it  must  be  my  excuse 
that  the  visit  to  be  described  was  not  undertaken  in 
the  customary  spirit.  All  other  accounts,  so  far  as  I 
know,  of  interviews  with  Whitman  have  been  written 
by  disciples  who  approached  the  shrine  adoring  and 
ready  to  be  dazzled.  The  visitor  whose  experience — 
and  it  was  a  very  delightful  one — is  now  to  be 
chronicled,  started  under  what  was,  perhaps,  the  dis- 
advantage of  being  very  unwilling  to  go  ;  at  least,  it 
will  be  admitted  that  the  tribute — for  tribute  it  has  to 
be — is  all  the  more  sincere. 

When  I  was  in  Boston,  in  the  winter  of  1884,  I 
received  a  note  from  Whitman  asking  me  not  to  leave 
America  without  coming  to  see  him.  My  first  instinct 
was  promptly  to  decline  the  invitation.  Camden,  New 
Jersey,  was  a  very  long  way  off.  But  better  counsels 
prevailed ;  curiosity  and  civility  combined  to  draw  me, 
and  I  wrote  to  him  that  I  would  come.  It  would  be 
fatuous  to  mention  all  this,  if  it  were  not  that  I  particu- 
larly wish  to  bring  out  the  peculiar  magic  of  the  old 
man,  acting,  not  on  a  disciple,  but  on  a  stiff-necked  and 
froward  unbeliever. 

To  reach  Camden,  one  must  arrive  at  Philadelphia, 


Walt  Whitman  ;'      iai 

where  I  put  up  on  the  2nd  of  January,  1885,  ready  to 
pass  over  into  New  Jersey  next  morning.  I  took  the 
hall-porter  of  the  hotel  into  my  confidence,  and  asked 
if  he  had  ever  heard  of  Mr.  Whitman.  Oh,  yes,  they 
all  knew  "  Walt,"  he  said ;  on  fine  days  he  used  to 
cross  over  on  the  ferry  and  take  the  tram  into  Philadel- 
phia. He  liked  to  stroll  about  in  Chestnut  Street  and 
look  at  the  people,  and  if  you  smiled  at  him  he  would 
smile  back  again ;  everybody  knew  **  Walt."  In  the 
North,  I  had  been  told  that  he  was  almost  bedridden, 
in  consequence  of  an  attack  of  paralysis.  This  seemed 
inconsistent  with  wandering  round  Philadelphia. 

The  distance  being  considerable,  I  started  early  on  the 
3rd,  crossed  the  broad  Delaware  River,  where  blocks 
of  ice  bumped  and  crackled  around  us,  and  saw  the 
flat  shores  of  New  Jersey  expanding  in  front,  raked  by 
the  broad  morning  light.  I  was  put  ashore  in  a  crude 
and  apparently  uninhabited  village,  grim  with  that 
concentrated  ugliness  that  only  an  American  township 
in  the  depth  of  winter  can  display.  Nobody  to  ask  the 
way,  or  next  to  nobody.  I  wandered  aimlessly  about, 
and  v/as  just  ready  to  give  all  I  possessed  to  be  back 
again  in  New  York,  when  I  discovered  that  I  was 
opposite  No.  328  Mickle  Street,  and  that  on  a  minute 
brass  plate  was  engraved  "  W.  Whitman."  I  knocked 
at  this  dreary  little  two-storey  tenement  house,  and 
wondered  what  was  going  to  happen.  A  melancholy 
woman  opened  the  door;  it  was  too  late  now  to  go 
away.  But  before  I  could  speak,  a  large  figure,  hob- 
bling down  the  stairs,  called  out  in  a  cheery  voice,  "  Is 


''i&i''-'  ''•  '■■'  '  Critical  Kit-Kats 


that  my  friend  ? "  Suddenly,  by  I  know  not  what 
magnetic  charm,  all  wire-drawn  literary  reservations 
faded  out  of  being,  and  one's  only  sensation  was  of 
gratified  satisfaction  at  being  the  "  friend  "  of  this  very 
nice  old  gentleman. 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  greeting  on  the  stairs,  and 
then  the  host,  moving  actively,  though  clumsily,  and 
with  a  stick,  advanced  to  his  own  dwelling-room  on 
the  first  storey.  The  opening  impression  was,  as  the 
closing  one  would  be,  of  extreme  simplicity.  A  large 
room,  without  carpet  on  the  scrubbed  planks,  a  small 
bedstead,  a  little  round  stove  with  a  stack-pipe  in 
the  middle  of  the  room,  one  chair — that  was  all  the 
furniture.  On  the  walls  and  in  the  fireplace  such  a 
miserable  wall-paper — tinted,  with  a  spot — as  one 
sees  in  the  bedrooms  of  labourers'  cottages;  no  pictures 
hung  in  the  room,  but  pegs  and  shelves  loaded  with 
objects.  Various  boxes  lay  about,  and  one  huge 
clamped  trunk,  and  heaps,  mountains  of  papers  in  a 
wild  confusion,  swept  up  here  and  there  into  stacks 
and  peaks;  but  all  the  room,  and  the  old  man  himself, 
clean  in  the  highest  degree,  raised  to  the  nth  power  of 
stainlessness,  scoured  and  scrubbed  to  such  a  pitch  that 
dirt  seemed  defied  for  all  remaining  time.  Whitman, 
in  particular,  in  his  suit  of  hodden  grey  and  shirt 
thrown  wide  open  at  .the  throat,  his  grey  hair  and 
whiter  beard  voluminously  flowing,  seemed  positively 
blanched  with  cleanliness ;  the  whole  man  sand-white 
with  spotlessness,  like  a  deal  table  that  has  grown  old 
under  the  scrubbing-brush. 


Walt  Whitman  103 

Whitman  sat  down  in  the  one  chair  with  a  small 
poker  in  his  hand  and  spent  much  of  his  leisure  in 
feed'ng  and  irritating  the  stove.  I  cleared  some  papers 
away  from  off  a  box  and  sat  opposite  to  him.  When 
he  was  not  actively  engaged  upon  the  stove  his  steady 
attention  was  fixed  upon  his  visitor,  and  I  had  a  perfect 
opportunity  of  forming  a  mental  picture  of  him.  He 
sat  with  a  very  curious  pose  of  the  head  thrown  back- 
ward, as  if  resting  it  one  vertebra  lower  down  the 
spinal  column  than  other  people  do,  and  thus  tilting  his 
face  a  little  upwards.  With  his  head  so  poised  'and 
the  whole  man  fixed  in  contemplation  of  the  inter- 
locutor, he  seemed  to  pass  into  a  state  of  absolute 
passivity,  waiting  for  remarks  or  incidents,  the  glassy 
eyes  half  closed,  the  large  knotted  hands  spread  out 
before  him.  So  he  would  remain,  immovable  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  at  a  time,  even  the  action  of  speech 
betraying  no  movement,  the  lips  hidden  under  a 
cascade  of  beard.  If  it  be  true  that  all  reniarkable 
human  beings  resemble  animals,  then  Walt  Whitman 
was  like  a  cat — a  great  old  grey  Angora  Tom,  alert  in 
repose,  serenely  blinking  under  his  combed  waves  of 
hair,  with  e3es  inscrutably  dreaming. 

His  talk  was  elemental,  like  his  writings.  It  had 
none  of  the  usual  ornaments  or  irritants  of  conversation. 
It  welled  out  naturallv.  or  stopped  ;  it  was  innocent  of 
every  species  of  rhetoric  or  epigram.  It  was  the 
perfectly  simple  utterance  of  unaffected  urbanity.  So, 
I  imagine,  an  Oriental  sage  would  talk,  in  a  low 
uniform  tone,  without  any  excitement  or  haste,  without 


104  Critical  Kit-Kats 

emphasis,  iin  a  land  where  time  and  flurry  were 
unknown.  /Whitman  sat  there  with  his  great  head 
tilted  back,  smiling  serenely,  and  he  talked  about 
himself.  He  mentioned  his  poverty,  which  was  patent, 
and  his  paralysis ;  those  were  the  two  burdens 
beneath  which  he  crouched,  like  Issachar ;  he  seemed 
to  be  quite  at  home  with  both  of  them,  and  scarcely 
heeded  them.  I  think  I  asked  leave  to  move  my  box, 
for  the  light  began  tS  pour  in  at  the  great  uncurtained 
window ;  and  then  AVhitman  said  that  some  one  had 
promised  him  a  gift  of  curtains,  but  he  was  not  eager 
for  them,  he  thought  they  "kept  out  some  of  the  light.". 
Light  and  air,  that  was  all  he  wanted ;  and  through 
the  winter  he  sat  there  patiently  waiting  for  the  air 
and  light  of  summer,  when  he  would  hobble  out  agam 
and  bask  his±)ody  in  a  shallow  creek  he  knew  **  back 
of  Camden."|FMeanwhile  he  waited,  waited  with  infinite 
patience,  uncomplaining,  thinking  about  the  sand,  and 
the  thin  hot  layer  of  water  over  it,  in  that  shy  New 
Jerse}'  creek.  And  he  winked  away  in  silence,  while 
I  thought  of  the  Indian  poetValmik'  v':?;i,  in  a  trance 
of  voluptuous  abstraction,  he  sat  under  the  fig-tree  and 
was  slowly  eaten  of  ants. 

|rln  the  bareness  of  Whitman's  great  double  room 
only  two  objects  suggested  art  in  any  way,  but  each  of 
these  was  appropriate.  One  was  a  print  of  a  Red 
Indian,  given  him,  he  told  me,  by  Catlin  ;  it  had  inspired 
the  passage  about "  the  red  aborigines  "  in  Starting  from 
Paumanok.  ;  The  other — positively  the  sole  and  only 
thing  that 'redeemed  the  bareness  of  the  back-room 


Walt  Whitman  105 

where  Whitman's  bound  works  were  stored — was  a 
photograph  of  a  very  handsome  young  man  in  a  boat, 
sculhng.  V I  asked  him  about  this  portrait  and  he  said 
several  notable  things  in  consequence.  He  explained, 
first  of  all,  that  this  was  one  of  his  greatest  friends,  a 
professional  oarsman  from  Canada,  a  well-known  sport- 
ing character.  He  continued,  that  these  were  the 
people  he  liked  best,  athletes  who  had  a  business  in 
the  open  air ;  that  those  were  the  plainest  and  most 
aftectionate  of  men,  those  who  lived  in  the  light  and 
air  and  had  to  study  to  keep  their  bodies  clean  and 
fresh  and  ruddy  ;  that  his  soul  went  out  to  such  people, 
and  that  they  were  strangely  drawn  to  him,  so  that  at 
the  lowest  ebb  of  his  fortunes,  when  the  world  reviled 
him  and  ridiculed  him  most,' fortunate  men  of  this  kind, 
highly  prosperous  as  gymnasts  or  runners,  had  sought 
him  out  and  had  been  friendly  to  him.  "  And  now," 
he  went  on,  "  I  only  wait  for  the  spring,  to  hobble  out 
with  my  staff  into  the  woods,  and  when  I  can  sit  all 
day  long  close  to  a  set  of  woodmen  at  their  work,  I 
am  perfectly  happy,  for  something  of  their  life  mixes 
with  the  smell  of  the  chopped  timber,  and  it  passes, 
into  my  veins  and  I  am  old  and  ill  no  longer."  I 
think  these  were  his  precise  words,  and  they  struck  me 
more  than  anything  else  that  he  said  throughout  that 
long  and  pleasant  day  I  spent  with  hhn.y 

It  might  be  supposed,  and  I  think  th^rt  even  admirers 
have  said,  that  Whitman  had  no  humour.  But  that 
seemed  to  me  not  quite  correct.  No  boisterous  humour, 
truly,   but    a   gentle    sort   of  sly   fun,   something   like 


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Tennyson's,  he  certainly  showed.  For  example,  he 
told  me  of  some  tribute  from  India,  and  added,  with  a 
twinkling  smile,  "  You  see,  I  '  sound  my  barbaric  yawp 
over  the  roofs  of  the  world.'"  But  this  was  rare: 
mostly  he  seemed  dwelling  in  a  vague  pastoral  past  Ufe, 
the  lovely  days  when  he  was  young,  and  went  about 
with  "  the  boys  "  in  the  sun.  He  read  me  many  things  ; 
a  new  "  poem,"  intoning  the  long  irregular  lines  of  it 
not  very  distinctly  ;  and  a  preface  to  some  new  edition. 
All  this  has  left,  I  confess,  a  dim  impression,  swallowed 
up  in  the  serene  self-unconsciousness,  the  sweet,  digni- 
fied urbanity,  the  feline  immobility. 
J  j//As  I  passed  from  the  little  house  and  stood  in  dull,^ 
deserted  Mickle  Street  once  more,'  my  heart  was  full 
of  affection  for  this  beautiful  old  man,"who  had  just 
said  in  his  calm  accents,  "Good-bye,  my  friend  1 " 
I  felt  that  the  experience  of  the  day  was  embalmed  b^ 
something  that  a  great  poet  had  written  long  ago,^l3Ut 
I  could  not,  find  what  it  was  till  we  started  once  more 
to  cross  the  frosty  Delaware  ;  then  it  came  to  me,  and 
I  knew  that  when  Shelley  spoke  of 

Peace  within  and  c^lm  around. 

And  that  content,  surpassifig  wealthy 

The  sage  in  meditation  found. 

And  walk'd  with  inward  glory  crowned, 

he  had  been  prophe^ing  of  Walt  Whitman,  nor  shall 
I  ever  read  those  lines  again  without  thinking  of  the 
old  rhapsodist  in  his  empty  room,  glorified  by  patience'' 
and  philosophy.7 


Walt  Whitman  ib7 

And  so  an  unbeliever  went  to  see  Walt  Whitman, 
and  was  captivated  without  being  converted. 

Ill 

It  is  related  ot  the  great  Condd  that,  at  the  opening 
of  his  last  campaign,  sunken  in  melancholy,  half  mad- 
dened with  fatigue  and  the  dog-star  heat  of  summer, 
having  reached  at  length  the  cool  meadows  in  front  of 
the  Abbey  of  St.  Antoine,  he  suddenly  leaped  from  his 
horse,  flung  away  his  arms  and  his  clothing,  and  rolled 
stark-naked  in  the  grass  under  a  group  of  trees. 
Having  taken  this  bath  amidst  his  astonished  officers, 
he  rose  smiling  and  calm,  permitted  himself  to  be 
dressed  and  armed  anew,  and  rode  to  battle  with  all 
his  accustomed  resolution.  The  instinct  which  this 
anecdote  illustrates  lies  deep  down  in  human  nature, 
and  the  more  we  are  muffled  up  in  social  conventions 
the  more  we  occasionally  long  for  a  whimsical  return 
to  nudity.  If  a  writer  is  strong  enough,  from  one 
cause  or  another,  to  strip  the  clothing  off  from  civilisa- 
tion, that  writer  is  sure  of  a  welcome  from  thousands 
of  over-civilised  readers. 

Now  the  central  feature  of  the  writings  of  Walt 
Whitman  is  their  nakedness.  In  saying  this  I  do  not 
refer  to  half-a-dozen  phrases,  which  might  with  ease 
be  eliminated,  that  have  thrown  Mrs.  Grundy  into  fits. 
No  responsible  criticism  will  make  a  man  stand  or  fall 
by  what  are  simply  examples  of  the  carrying  of  a  theory 
to  excess.  But  of  the  theory  itself  I  speak,  and  it  is 
one  of  uncompromising  openness.     It  is  a  defence  of 


io8  Critical  Kit-Kats 

bare  human  nature,  stripped,  not  merely  of  all  its 
trappings  and  badges,  but  even  of  those  garments 
which  are  universally  held  necessary  to  keep  the  cold 
away.  In  so  many  of  his  writings,  and  particularly,  of 
course,  in  the  Discours  of  1750,  Rousseau  undertook 
the  defence  of  social  nudity.  He  called  upon  his  world, 
which  prided  itself  so  much  upon  its  elegance,  to  divest 
the  body  politic  of  all  its  robes.  He  declared  that 
while  Nature  has  made  man  happy  and  virtuous,  society 
it  is  that  renders  him  miserable  and  depraved,  there- 
fore let  him  get  rid  of  social  conventions  and  roll  naked 
in  the  grass  under  the  elm-trees.  The  invitation,  as  I 
have  said,  is  one  which  never  lacks  acceptance,  and 
Rousseau  was  followed  into  the  forest  by  a  multitude. 

If  Walt  Whitman  goes  further  than  Rousseau,  it 
merely  is  that  he  is  more  elementary.  The  tempera- 
ment of  the  American  is  in  every  direction  less  com- 
plex. He  has  none  of  the  restless  intellectual  vivacity, 
none  of  the  fire,  none  of  the  passionate  hatred  of 
iniquity  which  mark  the  French  philosopher.  With 
Walt  Whitman  a  coarse  simplicity  suffices,  a  certain 
blunt  and  determined  negation  of  artificiality  of  every 
kind.  ^He  is,  roughly  speaking,  a  keenly  observant 
and  sentient  being,  without  thought,  without  selection, 
without  intensity,  egged  on  by  his  nervous  system  to 
a  revelation  of  himself.  He  records  his  own  sensations 
one  after  another,  careful  only  to  present  them  in 
veracious  form,  without  drapery  or  rhetoric.  His 
charm  for  others  is  precisely  this,  that  he  observes  so 
closely,  and  records  so  great  a  multitude  of  observa- 


Walt  Whitman  109 


tions,  and  presents  them  with  so  complete  an  absence 
of  prejudice,  that  any  person  who  approaches  his 
writings  with  an  unbiassed  mind  must  discover  in 
them  a  reflection  of  some  part  of  himself.  This  I 
believe  to  be  the  secret  of  the  extraordinary  attraction 
which  these  rhapsodical  utterances  have  for  most 
emotional  persons  at  one  crisis  or  another  in  their 
life's  development.  But  I  think  criticism  ought  to  be 
able  to  distinguish  between  the  semi-hysterical  pleasure 
of  self-recognition  and  the  sober  and  legitimate  delights 
of  literature. 

The  works  of  Walt  Whitman  cover  a  great  many 
pages,  but  the  texture  of  them  is  anything  but  subtle. 
When  once  the  mind  perceives  what  it  is  that  Whit- 
man sa3'S,  it  is  found  that  he  repeats  himself  over  and 
over  again,  and  that  all  his  "  gospel "  (as  the  odious 
modern  cant  puts  it)  is  capable  of  being  strained  into 
very  narrow  limits.  One  •'  poem "  contains  at  least 
the  germ  of  all  the  sheaves  and  sheav3s  of  writing 
that  Whitman  published.  There  is  not  one  aspect 
of  his  nature  which  is  not  stated,  or  more  than  broadly 
hinted  at,  in  the  single  piece  which  he  named  after 
himself,  "  Walt  Whitman."  It  was  appropriately 
named,  for  an  unclothing  of  himself,  an  invitation  to 
all  the  world  to  come  and  prove  that,  stripped  of  his 
clothes,  he  was  exactly  like  everybody  else,  was  the 
essence  of  his  religion,  his  philosophy,  and  his  poetry. 

It  is  not  unfair  to  concentrate  attention  on  the 
section  of  sixty  pages  which  bears  the  name  "Walt 
Whitman"    in    the  volume   of  his   collected  writings. 


no  Critical  Kit-Kats 

It  is  very  interesting  reading.  No  truly  candid  person 
meeting  with  it  for  the  first  time,  and  not  previously 
prejudiced  against  it,  could  but  be  struck  with  its 
felicities  of  diction  and  its  air  of  uncontrolled  sincerity. 
A  young  man  of  generous  impulses  could  scarcely,  I 
think,  read  it  and  not  fall  under  the  spell  of  its  sym- 
pathetic illusions.  It  contains  unusually  many  of  those 
happy  phrases  which  are,  I  contend,  the  sole  purely 
literary  possession  of  Whitman.  It  contains  dozens 
of  those  closely-packed  lines  in  each  of  which  Whitman 
contrives  to  concentrate  a  whole  picture  of  some  action 
or  condition  of  Nature.  It  contains,  perhaps,  the  finest, 
certainly  the  most  captivating,  of  all  Whitman's  natural 
apostrophes  : 

Press  close,  bare-bosom^ J  night.  Press  close,  magnetic,  nourish- 
ing night ! 

Night  of  south  winds  I  night  of  the  large  few  stars! 

Still,  nodding  night  I  mad,  naked  summer  night  I 

Smile,  O  voluptuous,  cool-breath' d  earth  ! 

Earth  of  the  slumhering  and  liquid  trees  I 

Earth  of  departed  sunset  I  earth  of  the  mountains,  misty-topt ! 

Earth  of  the  vitreous  pour  of  the  full  moon,  just  tinged  with  blue  ! 

Earth  of  shine  and  dark,  mottling  the  tide  of  the  river  ! 

Earth  of  the  limpid  grey  of  clouds,  brighter  and  clearer  for  my 
sake  ! 

Far-swooping,  elbow' d  earth  1  rich,  apple- blossom' d  earth  ! 

Smile,  Jor  your  lover  comes  I 

All  this  represents  the  best  side  of  the  author ;  but 
"Walt  Whitman  "  exhibits  his  bad  sides  as  well— his 
brutality,  mis-styling  itself  openness,  his  toleration  of 


Walt  Whitman  1 1 1 

the  ugly  and  the  forbidden,  his  terrible  laxity  of  thought 
and  fatuity  of  judgment. 

If  he  studies  "Walt  Whitman"  carefully,  a  reader 
of  middle  life  will  probably  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  best  wa}'  to  classify  the  wholly  anomalous  and 
irregular  writer  who  produced  it  is  to  place  him  by 
himself  as  a  maker  of  poems  in  solution.  I  am  inclined 
to  admit  that  in  Walt  Whitman  we  have  just  missed 
receiving  from  the  New  World  one  of  the  greatest  of 
modern  poets,  but  that  we  have  missed  it  must  at  the 
same  time  be  acknowledged.  To  be  a  poet  it  is  not 
necessary  to  be  a  consistent  and  original  thinker,  with 
an  elaborately-balanced  system  of  ethics.  |  The  absence 
of  intellectual  quality,  the  superabundance  of  the 
emotional,  the  objective,  the  pictorial,  are  no  reasons 
for  undervaluing  Whitman's  imagination.  But  there 
is  one  condition  which  distinguishes  art  from  mere 
amorphous  expression ;  that  condition  is  the  result  of 
a  process  through  which  the  vague  and  engaging  obser- 
vations of  Whitman  never  passed.  He  felt  acutely 
and  accurately,  his  imagination  was  purged  of  external 
impurities,  he  lay  spread  abroad  in  a  condition  of 
literary  solution.  But  there  he  remained,  an  expanse 
of  crystallisable  substances,  waiting  for  the  structural 
change  that  never  came ;  rich  above  almost  all  his 
coevals  in  the  properties  of  poetry,  and  yet,  for  want 
of  a  definite  shape  and  fixity,  doomed  to  sit  for  ever 
apart  from  the  company  of  the  Poets. 

1S93. 


COUNT    LYOF    TOLSTOI 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi 

It  has  been  the  misfortune  of  Count  Tolstoi  to  become 
widely  known  in  the  West  of  Europe  at  the  very  moment 
when  he  was  performing  a  complete  change  of  dress. 
The  legitimate  enthusiasm  which  his  works  of  the  ima- 
gination might  awaken  has  been  confused  with  the 
perhaps  equally  legitimate,  but  certainly  much  more 
obvious  and  vulgar  surprise  at  the  amazing  character  of 
his  new  social  and  religious  views.  If  the  alteration  had 
taken  place  sooner  or  later,  it  would  have  been  pleasanter 
for  us  and  juster  to  him.  If  he  had  always  written  in 
a  language  •,';lii':b  wc  cculd  understand,  we  should  long 
ago  have  comprehended  the  nature  of  his  literary  genius, 
and  should  have  been  less  startled  by  his  moral  trans- 
formation ;  if  the  presentation  to  Europe  had  been  de- 
layed, we  should  have  taken  his  work  as  a  whole.  But 
in  point  of  fact,  we  were  constantly  being  assured  that 
behind  the  dyed  curtains  of  that  Scythian  tent  there  sat 
a  mysterious  chieftain,  arrayed  in  all  the  splendours  of 
the  Orient.  We  tear  the  veil  aside  at  last,  and  discover 
a  gentleman  in  puris  naturalibics,  selecting  a  new  set  of 
garments.  It  is  true  that  this  disturbing  circumstance 
has  enormously  added  to  the  fame  and  success  of  the 
Russian  writer,  and  that  a  hundred  persons  are  found 


ii6  Critical  Kit-Kats 

to  discuss  his  nakedness  to  one  who  cares  to  think  of 
what  he  was  when  he  was  clothed.  But  this  is  little 
consolation  to  the  student  of  pure  literature,  who  feels 
inclined  to  drive  out  the  social  group,  and  to  guard  Count 
Tolstoi's  doors  till  he  has  wrapped  himself  once  more 
in  raiment,  whether  civilised  or  savage. 

Of  the  moral  speculations  of  the  great  Russian 
novelist  nothing  shall  here  be  said.  Most  of  what  has 
passed  for  recent  criticism  has  occupied  itself  with  a 
vain  and  capricious  agitation  of  Tolstoi's  views  on  mar- 
riage, on  education,  on  non-resistance  to  authority,  to 
the  exclusion  of  all  other  considerations.  It  would  be 
absurd  to  deny  that  some  of  these  theories  irresistibly 
invite  discussion,  or  that  the  distinguished  gravity  of 
the  author  is  not  justly  fascinating  to  an  age  which  has 
been  exhausted  and  lacerated  by  the  funniness  of  its 
funny  men.  But  it  is  difficult  not  to  see,  also,  that 
speculation  of  this  kind  has  been  pursued  in  one  form 
or  another  by  every  generation,  that  it  has  never  3'et 
succeeded  in  solving  the  riddle  of  this  painful  earth, 
and  that  in  contrast  to  its  evasiveness  and  intangibility, 
the  positive  consideration  of  literature  as  literature  has 
a  great  charm.  In  these  few  words,  then,  Tolstoi  will 
not  be  treated  as  the  prophet  or  saviour  of  society,  but 
as  the  writer  of  novels.  For  this  extremely  unpopular 
mode  of  regarding  him,  a  critic's  best  excuse  is  to  recall 
those  touching  and  noble  words  written  by  Tourgenieff 
in  his  last  hours  to  his  great  successor : 

"  Dearest  Lyof  Nikolaievitch,  it  is  long  since  I  wrote 
to  you.     I  have  been  in  bed,  and  it  is  my  death-bed.    I 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  1 17 

cannot  get  well ;  that  is  no  longer  to  be  thought  of.  I 
write  to  you  expressly  to  assure  you  how  happy  I  have 
been  to  be  your  contemporary,  and  to  present  to  you  a 
last,  a  most  urgent  request.  Dear  friend,  come  back  to 
literary  work  1  This  gift  came  to  you  whence  all  gifts 
come  to  us.  Ah !  how  happy  should  I  be  if  I  could 
thiiil^  that  you  would  listen  to  my  request.  My  friend, 
great  writer  of  our  land  of  Russia,  grant  me  this 
request." 

The  author  of  Anna  Karenine  has  granted  it  in  some 
degree,  but  how  rarely,  how  fitfully,  with  how  little  of 
the  artist's  fire  and  consecration  1  Let  us  hope  that  in 
a  near  future  he  will  give  us  of  the  things  of  the  spirit 
in  less  niggardly  a  fashion.  Let  him  remember  that  at 
the  present  moment  there  is  no  man  living  from  whom 
a  sane  and  complete  work  of  fiction,  on  a  large  scale, 
would  be  more  universally  welcomed. 


The  life  of  the  Russian  novelist  has  often  been  nar- 
rated, but  presents  no  features  of  very  remarkable 
interest.  Count  Lyof  Nikolaievitch  Tolstoi  vwas  born 
on  August  28  (o.s.),  1828,  at  Yasnaya  Polyana,  an 
estate  on  the  road  to  Orel,  a  few  miles  out  of  Tula,  in 
the  centre  of  Russia.  This  place  and  its  surroundings 
were  described  in  a  very  charming  paper  contributed  by 
Mr.  Kennen  to  The  Century  Magazine  for  June  1887. 
Yasnaya  Polyana  has  been  the  alpha  and  omega  of 
Tolstoi's  life,  all  absences  from  it  being  of  the  nature  of 


Ii8  Critical  Kit-Kats 

episodes.  He  has  made  it  his  sole  residence  for  the 
last  thirty  years,  and  it  is  the  scene  of  his  much  talked- 
of  social  experiments. 

Western  "Europe  was  long  under  the  impression  that 
Tourgenieif  and  Tolstoi  were  isolated  apparitions  on  a 
bare  stage.  But  as  familiarity  with  Russian  fiction  in- 
crease.^ in  the  West,  we  see  the  same  structural  growths 
proceeding  in  Russia  as  in^  the  other  countries  of  the 
world.  The  novel  there,  in  its  modern  form,  began  to 
exist  about  1840,  and  Gogd,  whose  Dead  Souls  ap- 
peared in  1842,  was  its  creator.  The  "Men  of  the 
Forties,"  as  they  are  called,  arose  out  of  the  shadow  of 
Gogol,  and  were  young  men  when  his  book  made  its 
first  profound  sensation.  The  birth  date^s  of  Gontcharoff, 
18 1 3,  Tourgenieff,  18 18,  Pisemsky,  1820,  and  Dostoieff- 
sky,  1 82 1,  explain  why  these  four  illustrious  novelists 
were  aroifsed  and  fired  by  the  publication  of  Dead  Souls. 
It  came  to  them,  with  its  realism,  its  deep  popular  sym- 
pathy, and  its  strange  humour,  as  a  revelation  at  the 
very  moment  when  the  br^in  of  a  young  man  of  genius 
is  most  incandescent.  But  Tolstoi,  younger  by  seven 
years  than  the  youngest  of  these,  did  not  arrive  at  in- 
tellectual maturity  till  after  the  first  ardour  of  the  new 
life  had  passed  away.  Russia,  in  its  rapid  awakening, 
was  a  different  place  in  1850  from  what  it  had  been  in 
1840,  and  to  understand  Tolstoi  aright  we  must  distin- 
guish him  from  the  men  of  the  Forties. 

In  endeavouring  to  form  an  idea  of  the  literary  influ- 
ences which  moulded  his  mind,  we  are  likely  to  be  more 
perplexed  than  aided  by  the  strange  book  called  Child' 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  119 

hood,  Boyhood,  Youth,  which  bears  a  striking  relation  to 
the  recently  published  autobiography  of  the  infancy  and 
adolescence  of  Pierre  Loti.  In  each  book  the  portrait 
is  so  different  from  what,  one  is  convinced,  any  other 
person,  however  observant  and  analytical,,  would  have 
made  of  the  child  in  question,  that  one  is  dubious  how 
far  the  tale  should  be  looked  upon  as  a  charming  and 
unconscious  fiction.  In  Tolstoi  the  little  anecdote  of 
the  imaginary  dream,  the  incidents  of  which  by  being 
repeated,  grew  to  seem  absolutely  true,  and  moved  the 
inventor  to  tears  of  self-pity,  though  given  as  a  sign  of 
scrupulous  verity  in  autobiography,  points  to  a  tendency 
which  is  very  natural  and  in  a  novelist  very  fortunate. 
But  a  strange  fact  is  that  these  semi-mythical,  in- 
tensely personal  and  curiously  minuie  notes  of  the  mind 
of  a  child  were  not  made  late  in  life,  when  the  memory 
often  recurs  to  the  remotest  past,  but  at  the  starting-point 
of  the  writer's  career.  Before  he  had  started  he  stopped 
to  look  back,  and  he  began  in  literature  where  most 
«ld  men  leave  ®ff.  The  Childhodd,  Boyhood,  Youth,  was 
commenced  as  early  as  185 1,  before  Tolstoi  opened 
his  brief  adventure  as  a  soldier.  This  book  appears  to 
be  one  of  its  author's  favourites  ;  he  was  long  caressing 
it  before  it  first  appeared,  and  he  has  entirely  remoulded 
it  once,  if  not  twice.  It  is  excessively  ingenious,  and 
one  notes  with  interest  that  the  first  book  which  attracted 
the  future  agriculturist's  attention  was  a  treatise  on  the 
growing  of  cabbages.  The  analysis  of  the  feelings  of 
a  nervous  child  has  seldom  been  carried  out  in  a  more 
masterly    fashion.       But    the    boek    is     often     dull, 


I20  Critical  Kit-Kats 

which  the  author's  later  work  can  hardly  be  accused 
of  being. 


It  was  Caucasia,  that  Wunderland  of  Russian  senti- 
ment and  romance,  which  first  awakened  the  ima- 
gination of  Tolstoi.  The  Vicomte  de  Vogue,  in  his 
delightful  chapter  on  the  idealism  of  Russia,  has  shown 
us  what  a  Byronic  fascination  was  exercised  by  the 
moonlit  gorges  of  the  Caucasus  on  the  poets  of  seventy 
years  ago.  It  was  to  a  province  steeped  in  romantic 
melancholy,  penetrated  by  reminiscences  of  Pouchkine 
and  Lermantof,  that  Tolstoi,  a  spirit  of  a  very  different 
order,  travelled  in  185 1.  Suddenly  captured  by  the 
genius  of  the  place,  he  enlisted  in  the  army,  and 
"became  an  officer  of  artillery  in  a  mountain  fortress 
over  the  Terek.  Here  he  began  to  be  an  author, 
though  he  published  none  of  his  Caucasian  studies  till 
he  had  left  the  Caucasus,  on  the  breaking  out  of  the 
Turkish  war,  in  1853.  The  contrast  between  the 
Asiatic  and  himself  is  the  first  problem  which  moves 
him  in  the  world  of  fiction.  Now  it  is  illustrated  by 
Olenine,  the  victim  of  ennui,  who  flings  himself  into 
the  friendship  of  the  savage  Orientals ;  now  by  Jiline, 
who,  unwillingly,  and  after  a  gallant  struggle,  is  cap- 
tured and  made  to  live  among  them,  but  ultimately 
casts  his  chains  aside ;  now  by  the  gross  and  comfort- 
loving  Kosteline,  who  pines  away  in  the  Tartar  camp, 
and  dies.  In  each  case,  though  not  always  so  roman- 
tically as  in  The  Cossacks,  what  interests  the  novelist  is 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  121 

the  difference  of  race  and  instinct,  rendering  the  inner 
meaning  of  those  outward  trappings  whose  barbaric 
picturesqueness  tempts  him  to  loiter  on  its  details. 
Tolstoi  left  the  Caucasus  a  skilful  writer,  expert  in  the 
conduct  of  a  narrative,  but  still  tinged  with  the  blue 
mist  of  romanticism. 

But  he  had  hardly  started  on  the  three  years'  laborious 
campaign  in  which  he  was  to  learn  so  much  of  Hfe, 
than  there  was  published  at  home  a  book  which  revealed 
to  Russian  readers  a  new  genius.  Polikouchka  was 
issued  in  1854,  the  year  after  The  Cossacks  appeared, 
and  if  it  achieved  a  less  popular  success,  it  deserved 
closer  attention.  It  may  be  that  Tolstoi,  who  has  filled 
wider  canvasses,  has  never  painted  a  genre-picture 
more  thoroughly  characteristic  of  himself  than  this 
study  of  manners  on  a  large  Russian  estate.  Poll ' 
kouchka  is  the  story  of  a  serf,  who  practises  as  a 
veterinary  surgeon,  but  who  is  really  a  quack  and  a 
thief,  through  weakness  and  drink,  since  he  is  not 
essentially  a  bad  fellow.  His  mistress,  the  Barina,  q 
sentimentalist,  pities  him,  and  believes  that  if  he  went 
through  an  ordeal,  on  his  honour,  it  might  be  the 
saving  of  him.  Accordingly  she  sends  him  to  a  neigh- 
bouring town  to  fetch  a  large  sum  of  money.  Every 
one,  even  the  man's  own  wife,  believes  that  he  will  either 
steal  it  or  squander  it  on  drink.  However,  he  starts, 
gets  the  money,  returns  faithfully,  and  just  before 
reaching  home  loses  it.  Unable  to  face  the  shame  of 
this  discovery,  he  hangs  himself,  and  the  money  is 
found,  all  safe,  directly  afterwards. 


122  Critical  Kit-Kats 

We  may  take  Polikouchka  as  typical  of  Tolstoi's 
work  at  this  time.  We  first  notice  that,  although  the 
book  is  short  and  episodical,  the  author  has  lavished 
upon  us  an  astounding  number  of  types,  all  sharply 
defined.  The  recruiting  scene  in  the  Mir  directly 
points  to  the  skill  with  which  the  vast  spaces  of  War 
and  Peace  were  presently  to  be  made  to  swarm  with 
human  life.  Then  the  power  of  sustained  analysis  of 
the  complex  phenomena  of  character,  in  its  stranger 
forms,  is  already  seen  to  be  completely  developed. 
The  mixture  of  vanity,  cupidity,  honour  and  stupidity 
which  riots  in  the  brain  of  Polikouchka  as  he  drives  off 
to  fetch  the  money  is  described  with  a  masterly  effect, 
and  in  a  manner  peculiar  to  Tolstoi.  Nor  is  this  story 
less  typical  of  its  author  in  its  general  construction 
than  in  its  specific  features.  In  later  years,  indeed, 
Tolstoi  rarely  opens  a  tale  with  the  sprightly  gaiety  of 
Polikouchka,  yet  he  has  preserved  the  habit — he  pre- 
serves it  even  in  the  Kreutzer  Sonata — of  beginning  his 
stories  with  a  sce.ne  of  an  amusing  nature.  In  Poli- 
kouchka the  tragical,  the  mystical  element  is  delayed 
longer  than  has  since  been  the  author's  wont,  but  it 
comes.  The  ghost  of  the  suicide  fingering  about  for 
the  money  in  Doutlov's  house  on  the  fatal  night  is  a 
signal  for  the  conventionality  of  the  tale,  as  a  piece  of 
literature,  to  break  up,  and  this  book,  which  began  so 
gaily  and  with  its  feet  so  firmly  planted  on  common 
life,  closes  in  a  scene  of  wild  and  scarcely  intelligible 
saturnalia. 

Unless  I  am  mistaken,  and  no  exact  bibliography  of 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  123 

Tolstoi's  writings  seems  to  be  at  hand — the  story  which 
we  call  Katia  (and  the  Russians  Conjugal  Happiness) 
was  written  while  the  novelist  was  still  fighting  the 
Turks.  The  extraordinary  volume  named  Sketches  from 
Sevastopol  certainly  belongs  to  this  period.  Totally 
distinct  as  these  are — the  one  being  a  study  of  peaceful 
upper-class  life  on  a  Russian  estate,  the  other  reflecting 
the  agitation  and  bewilderment  of  active  war — they 
show  an  advance  in  intellectual  power  which  takes 
much  the  same  direction  in  either  case.  Tolstoi  is  now 
seen  to  be  a  clairvoyant  of  unexampled  adroitness.  If 
"  adroit "  be  thought  an  adjective  incompatible  with 
clairvoyance,  it  has  at  least  not  been  used  here  without 
due  consideration.  The  peculiar  quality  of  Tolstoi's 
imagination  seems  to  require  this  combined  attribution 
of  the  intentional  and  the  accidental.  His  most 
amazing  feats  in  analysis  are  henceforth  not  strictly 
experimental,  but  conjectural.  The  feelings  of  Mik- 
hailov  when  the  bomb  burst,  and  he  was  wounded, 
may  have  been  experienced ;  those  of  Praskouchine, 
who  was  killed,  can  but  have  been  created.  Few 
readers  have'  not  been  forced  to  acknowledge  the 
amazing  power  of  the  passage  last  alluded  to.  But  to 
call  it  realism,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  is  to  rob  it  of 
half  its  value  as  a  singularly  lofty  exercise  of  the 
imagination.  Yet  it  is  precisely  in  this  aptitude  for 
conjectural  analysis  that  the  occasion  is  presented  for 
ambition  to  o'ervault  itself.  It  is  the  mind  that  sees 
the  non-experienced  quite  as  clearly  as  the  experienced, 
which   is   most   liable   to   lose   consciousness    of    the 


124  Critical  Kit-Kats 

difference  between  reality  and  unreality.  The  spirit 
that  "  walks  upon  the  winds  with  lightness  "  may  step 
into  the  cloud  of  mysticism  without  having  noticed  its 
presence. 


The  year  1858  was  a  great  period  of  awakening  in 
Russian  fiction.  It  saw  the  publication  of  Gontcharoft's 
masterpiece,  Oblomof;  Pisemsky  then  rose  to  a  height 
he  was  never  to  touch  again  in  his  great  realistic  novel, 
A  Thousand  Souls ;  Tourgenieff  produced  his  exquisite 
Assja,  and  prepared  the  distinguished  and  pathetic 
surprise  of  his  Nest  0/ Nobles.  Dostoieffsky,  still  away 
in  Siberia,  was  putting  together  his  notes  for  the  The 
House  of  the  Dead.  Tolstoi,  plunged  for  the  moment 
in  the  fashionable  life  of  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow, 
could  not  be  ignorant  of  this  sudden  revival  of  letters, 
nor  unmoved  by  it.  Hitherto  he  had  been  content  to 
obtain  striking  effects  within  restricted  limits.  If  his 
short  stories  had  not  always  closed  with  artistic 
regularity,  it  was  that  he  felt  the  true  observer's  dis- 
inclination to  draw  the  strings  together  artificially.  But 
he  could  be  contented  with  small  spaces  no  longer. 
His  mind  was  now  set  on  the  production  of  works 
whose  proportions  should  be  properly  related  to  the 
vast  and  complex  mass  of  figures  which  was  ever 
moving  in  procession  under  his  eyelids. 

His  next  important  publication.  Three  Deaths^  which 
came  out  in  1859,  resembles  a  bundle  of  studies  by  a 
great  artist  who  contemplates  a  gigantic  composition. 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  125 

The  opening  description  of  the  sick  lady  in  her 
carriage,  travelHng  in  an  atmosphere  of  eau-de-Cologne 
and  dust,  with  its  undemonstrative  inventory  of  telling 
details,  and  its  extreme  sincerity  of  observation,  is 
exactly  like  a  page,  like  any  page,  from  the  two  great 
novels  which  were  to  succeed  it.  But  the  volume  is 
not  without  faults  ;  of  three  selected  deaths,  two  should 
scarcely  have  been  taken  from  the  same  class  of  the 
same  sex.  The  final  picture  of  the  conscience-smitten 
coachman  chopping  a  cross  is  not  without  a  certain 
vagueness.  We  hurry  on,  since  a  book  awaits  us 
which  drowns  Three  Deaths  as  a  siar  is  drowned  in  the 
sunrise. 

Tolstoi  was  thirty-two  when  he  published  his  first 
great  novel.  War  and  Peace^  in  1 860.  Very  soon  after 
its  appearance,  he  took  himself  out  of  society,  and 
began  his  retirement  at  Yasnaya  Polyana.  For  fifteen 
years  the  world  heard  comparatively  little  of  him, 
and  then  he  crowned  the  edifice  of  his  reputation 
with  the  successive  volumes  oi  Anna  Karenine  (1875- 
'j']\  It  is  by  these  two  epics  of  prose  fiction, 
these  massive  productions,  that  he  is  mainly  known. 
By  degrees  the  fame  of  these  amazing  books  passed 
bej^ond  the  ring  of  the  Russian  language,  and  now 
most  educated  persons  in  the  West  of  Europe  have 
read  them.  They  dwarf  all  other  novels  by  compari- 
son. The  immense  area  of  place  and  time  which 
they  occupy  is  unexampled,  and  the  first  thing  which 
strikes  us  on  laying  them  down  is  their  comprehensive 
character. 


126  Critical  Kit-Kats 

The  work  of  no  other  novelist  is  so  populous  as  that 
of  Tolstoi.  His  books  seem  to  include  the  entire 
existence  of  generations.  In  War  and  Peace  we  live 
with  the  characters  through  nearly  a  quarter  of  a 
century.  They  are  young  when  we  are  introduced  to 
them ;  we  accompany  them  through  a  hundred  vicissi- 
tudes of  disease  and  health,  ill  fortune  and  good,  to 
death  or  to  old  age.  There  is  no  other  novelist,  whose 
name  I  can  recall,  who  gives  anything  like  this  sense 
of  presenting  all  that  moves  beneath  the  cope  of 
heaven.  Even  Stendhal  is  dwarfed  by  Tolstoi,  on  his 
own  ground  ;  and  the  Russian  novelist  joins  to  this 
anthill  of  the  soldier  and  the  courtier,  those  other 
worlds  of  Richardson,  of  Balzac,  of  Thackeray. 
Through  each  of  Tolstoi's  two  macrocosms,  thronged 
with  highly  vitalised  personages,  walks  one  man  more 
tenderly  described  and  vividly  presented  than  any  of 
the  others,  the  figure  in  whom  the  passions  of  the 
author  himself  are  enshrined,  Pierre  Bezouchof  in  the 
one  case,  Levine  in  the  other.  This  sort  of  hero,  to 
whose  glorification,  however,  the  author  makes  no 
heroic  concessions,  serves  to  give  a  certain  solidit}^  and 
continuity  to  the  massive  narration. 

These  two  books  are  so  widely  known,  that  in  so 
slight  a  sketch  as  this,  their  constitution  may  be  taken 
as  appreciated.  Their  magnificent  fulness  of  life  in 
movement,  their  sumptuous  passages  of  description, 
their  poignancy  in  pathos  and  rapidity  in  action,  their 
unwavering  devotion  to  veracity  of  impression,  without 
squalor  or  emphasis — these  qualities  have  given  Intel- 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  127 

lectual  enjoymeut  of  the  highest  kind  to  thousands  of 
English  readers.  They  are  panoramas  rather  than 
pictures,  yet  finished  so  finely  and  balanced  so  har- 
moniously that  we  forget  the  immense  scale  upon  which 
they  are  presented,  in  our  unflagging  delight  in  the 
variety  and  vivacity  of  the  scene.  No  novelist  is  less 
the  slave  of  a  peculiarity  in  one  of  his  characters  than 
Tolstoi.  He  loves  to  take  an  undeveloped  being,  such 
as  Andre  in  War  and  Peace,  or  Kitty  Cherbatzky  in 
Anna  Karenine,  and  to  blow  upon  it  with  all  the  winds 
of  heaven,  patiently  noting  its  revulsions  and  advances, 
its  inconsistencies  and  transitions,  until  the  whole 
metamorphosis  of  its  moral  nature  is  complete.  There 
is  no  greater  proof  of  the  extraordinary  genius  of  Count 
Tolstoi  than  this,  that  through  the  vast  evolution  of 
his  plots,  his  characters,  though  ever  developing  and 
changing,  always  retain  their  distinct  individuality. 
The  hard  metal  of  reflected  life  runs  ductile  through 
the  hands  of  this  giant  of  the  imagination. 


In  1877  Anna  Karenine  was  finished,  and  the  ap- 
plause with  which  it  was  greeted  rang  from  one  end  of 
Russia  to  the  other.  But  the  author  remained  in  un- 
broken seclusion  at  Yasnaya  Polyana.  He  began  to 
write  another  romance  on  the  same  colossal  scale,  this 
time  taking  up  the  history  of  Central  Europe  at  a  point 
somewhat  subsequent  to  the  close  of  War  and  Peace. 
Before  he  had  written  many  chapters,  that  crisis,  that 


128  Critical  Kit-Kats 

social  and  religious  conversion  ensued,  which  has 
tinctured  his  life  and  work  ever  since.  He  threw  his 
novel  aside,  and,  at  first,  he  was  swallowed  up  in 
didactic  activity,  composing  those  volumes  on  religion, 
education,  and  sociology  which  have  created  so  great  a 
stir.  But  he  has  to  some  slight  degree,  perhaps  in 
answer  to  Tourgenieff's  dying  prayer,  returned  to  the 
exercise  of  his  talent,  and  has  added  new  stories, 
most  of  them  short,  and  most  of  them  eccentric  or 
mythical,  to  his  repertory.  He  has  composed  very 
simple  tales  for  children  and  peasants,  and  some  of 
these  are  of  a  thrilling  nalvetd.  He  has  written, 
for  older  readers,  A  Poor  Devil  and  The  Death  of  Ivan 
Iliitch. 

To  readers  who  desire  a  direct  introduction  to  the 
work  of  Count  Tolstoi  no  better  volume  can  be  recom- 
mended than  that  latest  mentioned.  It  is  an  unsur- 
passed example  of  his  naturalism,  with  its  instinctive 
and  yet  imaginative  interpretation  of  the  most  secret 
sentiments  of  the  soul.  It  is  piteously  human ;  nay, 
the  outcome  of  it  all,  pushed  to  its  logical  conclusion, 
is  of  a  kind  to  break  the  very  heart.  Yet  it  is  scarcely 
morbid,  because  wholesomely  observed ;  nor  cynical, 
because  interpenetrated  with  pity  and  love.  Ivan 
Iliitch  is  a  successful  lawyer,  rising  to  a  brilliant  and 
commanding  position  in  the  world,  who  sickens  of  an 
obscure  internal  complaint,  and  slowly  dies.  His  in- 
stincts, his  thoughts,  are  followed  and  evenly  chronicled 
with  extreme  minuteness,  till  all  is  obscured  in  the 
final  misery  of  dissolution.     The  feelings  of  the  un- 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  129 

happy  wretch  himself,  of  his  wife,  children,  servants, 
and  friends,  are  rendered  by  Tolstoi  with  that  curious 
clairvoyance  which  we  have  seen  to  be  his  cardinal 
gift. 

In  reflecting  upon  such  a  book  as  The  Death  of  Ivan 
Iliitch,  it  is  natural  to  ask  ourselves  in  what  the  realism 
of  Tolstoi  consists,  and  how  it  differs  from  that  of 
M.  Zola  and  Mr.  Howells.  In  the  first  place,  their 
habit  of  producing  an  impression  by  exhaustingly  re- 
cording all  the  details  which  it  is  possible  to  observe 
is  not  his.  Tolstoi,  if  they  are  called  realists,  should 
be  styled  an  impressionist,  not  in  the  sense  used  by 
the  artists  of  the  present  moment,  but  as  Bastien 
Lepage  was  an  impressionist  in  painting.  If  Zola  and 
Howells  fill  the  canvas  with  details  to  its  remotest 
corner,  Tolstoi  concentrates  his  attention  upon  one 
figure  or  group,  and  renders  the  effect  of  that  single 
object  with  a  force  and  minute  exactitude,  which  is 
positively  amazing,  and  which  far  surpasses  theirs. 
Of  course,  a  book  on  such  a  scale  as  War  and  Peace 
would  not  have  been  conducted  to  a  close  at  all  if  the 
Zola  method  had  been  brought  to  bear  upon  it.  But 
an  examination  of  Tolstoi's  short  tales  will  show  that 
even  when  he  has  no  need  of  husbanding  space  he 
adopts  the  same  impressionist  manner.  With  him, 
though  observation  is  vivid,  imagination  is  more 
vigorous  still,  and  he  cannot  be  tied  down  to  describe 
more  than  he  chooses  to  create. 

This  may  serve  to  explain  why  his  style  sometimes 
seems  so  negligent,  and  even  confused,  and  why  his 

Z 


130  Critical  Kit-Kats 

stories  invariably  present  lacunoe,  blank  omissions 
where  the  writer  has  simply  overlooked  a  series  of 
events.  The  progress  of  Anna's  mind,  for  example, 
from  after  her  first  meeting  with  Wronsky  to  the 
original  formation  of  her  infatuated  feeling  for  him,  is 
a  hiatus.  For  some  reason  or  other,  it  did  not  interest 
the  novelist,  and  he  blandly  omitted  to  touch  it.  His 
lapses  of  memory,  his  negligence,  may  likewise  account 
for  the  tedious  and  interminable  length  at  which  certain 
episodes  are  treated.  There  are  some  country  scenes 
in  Anna  Karenine^  in  the  course  of  which  the  author 
seems  to  have  gone  to  sleep,  and  to  be  writing  on 
automatically.  Occasionally,  Tolstoi's  love  of  what  is 
real  leads  him  to  distinct  puerility,  as  in  The  Story  of 
a  Horse,  where  the  satire,  and  something  in  the  very 
tone  of  the  narrator's  voice  remind  us,  but  not  favour- 
ably, of  Hans  Andersen.  Yet  these  are  slight  points, 
and  they  simply  indicate  the  limits  of  a  very  noble 
genius. 

The  realists  in  Russia,  as  well  as  elsewhere,  have 
given  us  many  good  gifts — they  have  awakened  our 
observation,  have  exposed  our  hallucinations,  have 
shattered  our  absurd  illusions.  It  is  mere  injustice  to 
deny  that  they  have  been  seekers  after  truth  and  life, 
and  that  sometimes  they  have  touched  both  the  one 
and  the  other.  But  one  great  gift  has  commonly  eluded 
their  grasp.  In  their  struggle  for  reality  and  vividness, 
they  have  too  often  been  brutal,  or  trivial,  or  sordid. 
Tolstoi  is  none  of  these.  As  vital  as  any  one  of  them 
all,  he  is  what  they  are  not — distinguished.     His  radical 


Count  Lyof  Tolstoi  131 

optimism,  his  belief  in  the  beauty  and  nobility  of  the 
human  race,  preserve  him  from  the  Scylla  and  the 
Charybdis  of  naturalism,  from  squalor  and  insipidity. 
They  secure  for  his  best  work  that  quality  of  personal 
distinction  which  does  more  than  anything  else  to  give 
durability  to  imaginative  literature. 

1890. 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 


Christina  Rossetti 

Woman,  for  some  reason  which  seems  to  have 
escaped  the  philosopher,  has  never  taken  a  very  pro- 
minent position  in  the  history  of  poetry.  But  she  has 
rarely  been  absent  altogether  from  any  great  revival  ot 
poetic  literature.  The  example  of  her  total  absence 
which  immediately  flies  to  the  recollection  is  the  most 
curious  of  all.  That  Shakespeare  should  have  had  no 
female  rival,  that  the  age  in  which  music  burdened 
every  bough,  and  in  which  poets  made  their  appear- 
ance in  hundreds,  should  have  produced  not  a  solitary 
authentic  poetess,  even  of  the  fifth  rank,  this  is  curious 
indeed.  But  it  is  as  rare  as  curious,  for  though  women 
have  not  often  taken  a  very  high  position  on  Parnassus, 
they  have  seldom  thus  wholly  absented  themselves. 
Even  in  the  iron  age  of  Rome,  where  the  Muse  seemed 
to  bring  forth  none  but  male  children,  we  find,  bound 
up  with  the  savage  verses  of  Juvenal  and  Persius,  those 
seventy  lines  of  pure  and  noble  indignation  against  the 
brutality  of  Domitian  which  alone  survive  to  testify  to 
the  genius  of  Sulpicia. 

If  that  distinguished  lady  had  come  down  to  us  in 
seventy  thousand  verses  instead  of  seventy  lines,  would 
her  fame    have    been  greatly    augmented  ?      Probably 


136  Critical  KIt-Kats 

not.  So  far  as  we  can  observe,  the  strength  of  the 
great  poet-women  has  been  in  their  selection.  Not 
a  single  poetess  whose  fame  is  old  enough  to  base  a 
theory  upon  has  survived  in  copious  and  versatile 
numbers.  Men  like  Dryden  and  Victor  Hugo  can 
strike  every  chord  of  the  lyre,  essay  every  mode  and 
species  of  the  art,  and  impress  us  by  their  bulk  and 
volume.  One  very  gifted  and  amBitious  Englishwoman 
of  the  last  generation,  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning, 
essayed  to  do  the  same.  But  her  success,  it  must  be 
admitted,  grows  every  day  more  dubious.  Where  she 
strove  to  be  passionate  she  was  too  often  hysterical ; 
a  sort  of  scream  spoils  the  effect  of  all  her  full  tirades. 
She  remains  readable  mainly  where  she  is  exquisite, 
and  one  small  volume  would  suffice  to  contain  her  pro- 
bable bequest  to  posterity. 

It  is  no  new  theory  that  women,  in  order  to  succeed 
in  poetry,  must  be  brief,  personal,  and  concentrated. 
This  was  recognised  by  the  Greek  critics  themselves. 
Into  that  delicious  garland  of  the  poets  which  was 
woven  by  Meleager  to  be  hung  outside  the  gate  of  the 
Gardens  of  the  Hesperides  he  admits  but  two  women 
from  all  the  centuries  of  Hellenic  song.  Sappho  is 
there,  indeed,  because  "  though  her  flowers  were  few, 
they  were  all  roses,"  and,  almost  unseen,  a  single 
virginal  shoot  of  the  crocus  bears  the  name  of  Erinna. 
That  was  all  that  womanhood  gave  of  durable  poetry 
to  the  literature  of  antiquity.  A  critic,  writing  five 
hundred  years  after  her  death,  speaks  of  still  hearing 
the  swan-note  of  Erinna  clear  above  the  jangling  chatter 


Christina  Rossetti  137 

of  the  jays,  and  of  still  thinking  those  three  hundred 
hexameter  verses  sung  by  a  girl  of  nineteen  as  lovely 
as  the  loveliest  of  Homer's.  Even  at  the  time  of  the 
birth  of  Christ,  Erinna's  writings  consisted  of  what 
could  be  printed  on  half  a  dozen  pages  of  this  volume. 
The  whole  of  her  extant  work,  and  of  Sappho's  too, 
could  now  be  pressed  into  a  newspaper  column.  But 
their  fame  lives  on,  and  of  Sappho,  at  least,  enough 
survives  to  prove  beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt  the  lofty 
inspiration  of  her  genius.  She  is  the  type  of  the 
woman-poet  who  exists  not  by  reason  of  the  variety  or 
volume  of  her  work,  but  by  virtue  of  its  intensity,  its 
individuality,  its  artistic  perfection. 

At  no  time  was  it  more  necessary  to  insist  on  this 
truth  than  it  is  to-day.  The  multiplication  of  books  of 
verse,  the  hackneyed  character  of  all  obvious  notation 
of  life  and  feeling,  should,  one  would  fancy,  tend  to 
make  our  poets  more  exiguous,  more  concise,  and  more 
trimly  girt.  There  are  few  men  nowadays  from  whom 
an  immense  flood  of  writing  can  be  endured  without 
fatigue  ;  few  who  can  hold  the  trumpet  to  their  lips  for 
hours  in  the  market-place  without  making  a  desert 
around  them.  Yet  there  never  was  a  time  when  the 
pouring  out  of  verse  was  less  restrained  within  bounds. 
Everything  that  occurs  to  the  poet  seems,  to-day,  to 
be  worth  writing  down  and  printing.  The  result  is 
the  neglect  of  really  good  and  charming  work,  which 
misses  all  effect  because  it  is  drowned  in  stuff  that  is 
second-  or  third-rate.  The  women  who  write,  in 
particular,  pursued  by  that  commercial  fervour  which  is 


138  Critical  Kit-Kats 

so  curious  a  feature  of  our  new  literary  life,  and  which 
sits  so  inelegantly  on  a  female  figure,  are  in  a  ceaseless 
hurry  to  work  off  and  hurry  away  into  oblivion  those 
qualities  of  their  style  which  might,  if  seriously  and 
coyly  guarded,  attract  a  permanent  attention. 

Among  the  women  who  have  written  verse  in  the 
Victorian  age  there  is  not  one  by  whom  this  reproach 
is  less  deserved  than  it  is  by  Miss  Rossetti.  Severely 
true  to  herself,  an  artist  of  conscientiousness  as  high  as 
her  skill  is  exquisite,  she  has  never  swept  her  fame  to 
sea  in  a  flood  of  her  own  outpourings.  In  the  follow- 
ing pages  I  desire  to  pay  no  more  than  a  just  tribute  of 
respect  to  one  of  the  most  perfect  poets  of  the  age — 
not  one  of  the  most  powerful,  of  course,  nor  one  of  the 
mpst  epoch-making,  but  to  one  of  the  most  perfect — 
to  a  writer  toward  whom  we  may  not  unreasonably 
expect  that  students  of  EngUsh  literature  in  the  twenty- 
fourth  century  may  look  back  as  the  critics  of  Alexandria 
did  toward  Sappho  and  toward  Erinna. 

So  much  has  been  written,  since  the  untimely  death 
of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  on  the  circumstances  of  his 
family  history,  that  it  is  not  requisite  to  enter  very 
fully  into  that  subject  in  the  present  sketch  of  his 
youngest  sister.  It  is  well  known  that  the  Italian  poet 
Gabriele  Rossetti,  after  a  series  of  romantic  adventures 
endured  in  the  cause  of  liberty,  settled  in  London,  and 
married  the  daughter  of  another  Italian  exile,  G. 
Polidori,  Lord  Byron's  physician.  From  this  stock, 
three-fourths  of  which  was  purely  Italian,  there  sprang 
four  children,  of  whom  Dante  Gabriel  was  the  second, 


Christina  Rossetti  139 

and  Christina  Georgina,  born  in  December,  1830,  the 
youngest.  There  was  nothing  in  the  training  of  these 
children  which  foreshadowed  their  various  distinction 
in  the  future ;  although  the  transplanted  blood  ran 
quicker,  no  doubt,  in  veins  that  must  now  be  called 
English,  not  Italian,  even  as  the  wine-red  anemone 
broke  into  flower  from  the  earth  that  was  carried  to 
the  Canipo  Santo  out  of  Palestine. 

We  cannot  fathom  these  mysteries  of  transplantation. 
No  doubt  a  thousand  Italian  families  might  settle  in 
London,  and  their  children  be  born  as  deaf  to  melody 
and  as  blind  to  Nature  as  their  playfellows  long  native 
to  Hoxton  or  Clerkenwell.  Yet  it  is  not  possible  to 
hold  it  quite  ah  accident  that  this  thousand  and  first 
family  discovered  in  London  soil  the  precise  chemical 
qualities  that  made  its  Italian  fibre  break  into  clusters 
of  blossom.  Gabriel  Rossetti,  both  as  poet  and  painter, 
remained  very  Italian  to  the  last,  but  his  sister  is  a 
thorough  Englishwoman.  Unless  I  make  a  great  mis- 
take, she  has  scarcely  visited  Italy,  and  in  her  poetry 
the  landscape  and  the  observation  of  Nature  are  not 
only  English,  they  are  so  thoroughly  local  that  I  doubt 
whether  there  is  one  touch  in  them  all  which  proves 
her  to  have  strayed  more  than  fifty  miles  from  London 
in  any  direction.  I  have  no  reason  for  saying  so 
beyond  internal  evidence,  but  I  should  be  inclined 
to  suggest  that  the  county  of  Sussex  alone  is 
capable  of  having  supplied  all  the  imagery  which  Miss 
Rossetti's  poems  contain.  Her  literary  repertory, 
too,  seems  purely  English  ;  there  is  hardly  a  solitary 


140  Critical  Kit-Kats 

touch  in  her  work  which  betrays  her  transalpine 
parentage. 

In  a  letter  to  myself,  in  words  which  she  kindly  lets 
me  give  to  the  public,  Miss  Rossetti  has  thus  summed 
up  some  valuable  impressions  of  her  earliest  bias  toward 
writing : 

"  For  me,  as  well  as  for  Gabriel,  whilst  our  '  school' 
was  everything,  it  was  no  one  definite  thing.  I,  as 
the  least  and  last  of  the  group,  may  remind  you  that 
besides  the  clever  and  cultivated  parents  who  headed 
us  all,  I  in  particular  beheld  far  ahead  of  myself  the 
clever  sister  and  two  clever  brothers  who  were  a  little 
(though  but  a  little)  my  seniors.  And  as  to  acquire- 
ments, I  lagged  out  of  all  proportion  behind  them,  and 
have  never  overtaken  them  to  this  day." 

I  interrupt  my  distinguished  friend  to  remark  that, 
even  if  we  do  not  take  this  modest  declaration  with  a 
grain  of  salt,  it  is  interesting  to  find  one  more  example 
of  the  fact  that  the  possession  of  genius  by  no  means 
presupposes  a  nature  apt  for  what  are  called  acquire- 
ments.    Miss  Rossetti  proceeds : 

"If  any  one  thing  schooled  me  in  the  direction  of 
poetry,  it  was  perhaps  the  delightful  idle  liberty  to 
prowl  all  alone  about  my  grandfather's  cottage-grounds 
some  thirty  miles  from  London,  entailing  in  my  child- 
hood a  long  stage-coach  journey  !  This  privilege  came 
to  an  end  when  I  was  eight  years  old,  if  not  earlier. 
The  grounds  were  quite  small,  and  on  the  simplest 
scale — but  in  those  days  to  me  they  were  vast,  varied, 
worth  exploring.     After  those  charming  holidays  ended 


Christina  Rossetti  141 

I  remained  pent  up  in  London  till  I  was  a  great  girl  of 
fourteen,  when  delight  reawakened  at  the  sight  of 
primroses  in  a  railway  cutting, — a  prelude  to  many 
lovely  country  sights." 

My  impression  is  that  a  great  deal  of  judicious 
neglect  was  practised  in  the  Rossetti  family,  and  that, 
like  so  many  people  of  genius,  the  two  poets,  brother 
and  sister,  contrived  to  evade  the  educational  mill. 
From  the  lips  of  Miss  Christina  herself  I  have  it  that 
all  through  her  early  girlhood  she  lay  as  a  passive 
weight  on  the  hands  of  those  who  invited  her  to  explore 
those  bosky  groves  called  arithmetic,  grammar,  and 
the  use  of  the  globes.  In  Mr.  R.  L.  Stevenson's  little 
masterpiece  of  casuistry  called  On  Idlers  and  Idling^ 
he  has  discussed  the  temper  of  mind  so  sympathetically 
that  I  will  say  no  more  than  this,  that  Philistia  never 
will  comprehend  the  certain  fact  that,  to  genius.  Chapter 
VI.,  which  is  primroses  in  a  railway  cutting,  is  often 
far  more  important  than  Chapter  XIII.,  which  happens 
to  be  the  subjunctive  mood.  But  for  these  mysteries 
of  education  I  must  refer  the  ingenuous  reader  to  Mr. 
Stevenson's  delightful  pages. 

From  her  early  childhood  Miss  Rossetti  seems  to 
have  prepared  herself  for  the  occupation  of  her  life, 
the  art  of  poetry.  When  she  was  eleven  her  verses 
began  to  be  noticed  and  preserved,  and  an  extremely 
rare  little  volume,  the  very  cynosure  of  Victorian 
bibliography,  permits  us  to  observe  the  development  of 
her  talent.  One  of  the  rarest  of  books — when  it  occa- 
sionally turns  up  at  sales  it  commands  an  extravagant 


142  Critical  Kit-Kats 

price — is  Vcfses  by  Christina  G.  Rossettt\  privately 
printed  in  1847,  at  the  press  of  her  grandfather  Mr.  G. 
Polidori,  "at  No.  15,  Park  Village  East,  Regent's  Park, 
London."  This  little  volume  of  sixty-six  pages,  dedi- 
cated to  the  author's  mother,  and  preceded  by  a  pretty 
little  preface  signed  by  Mr.  Polidori,  is  a  curious  revela- 
tion of  the  evolution  of  the  poet's  genius.  There  is 
hardly  one  piece  in  it  which  Miss  Rossetti  would  choose 
to  reprint  in  a  collected  edition  of  her  works,  but  there 
are  many  which  possess  the  greatest  interest  to  a 
student  of  her  mature  style.  The  earliest  verses — 
since  all  are  dated — show  us  merely  the  child's  desire 
for  expression  in  verse,  for  experiment  in  rhyme  and 
meter.  Gradually  we  see  the  buddings  of  an  individual 
manner,  and  in  the  latest  piece,  **  The  Dead  City,"  the 
completion  of  which  seems  to  have  led  to  the  printing 
of  the  little  collection,  we  find  the  poet  assuming  some- 
thing of  her  adult  manner.  Here  are  some  stanzas 
from  this  rarest  of  booklets,  which  will  be  new,  in  every 
probability,  to  all  my  readers,  and  in  these  we  detect, 
unmistakably,  the  accents  of  the  future  author  of 
Goblin  Market: 

If!  green  emerald  baskets  were 
Sun-red  apples^  streaked  and  fair  ; 
Here  the  nectarine  and  peachy 
And  ripe  plum  lay,  and  on  each 

The  bloom  rested  everywhere* 

Grapes  were  hanging  overhead^ 
Fur  pie y  pale^  and  ruby-red^ 


Christina  Rossetti  143 

And  in  the  panniers  all  around 
Tellozo  melons  shone,  fresh-found. 
With  the  dew  upon  them  spread. 

And  the  apricot  and  pear ^ 
And  the  pulpy  fg  were  there^ 
Cherries  and  dark  mulberries, 
*        Bunchy  currants,  strawberries. 
And  the  lemon  wan  and  fair. 

By  far  the  best  and  most  characteristic  of  all  her 
girlish  verses,  however,  are  those  contained  in  a  long 
piece  entitled  "  Divine  and  Human  Pleading,"  dated 
1846.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  be  the  first  to  publish  a 
passage  which  the  author  needs  not  blush  to  own  after 
nearly  fifty  years,  every  stanza  of  which  bears  the 
stamp  of  her  peculiar  manner : 

A  woman  stood  beside  his  bed: 

Her  breath  was  fragrance  all ; 
Round  her  the  light  was  very  bright. 

The  air  was  musical. 

He'- footsteps  shone  upon  the  stars, 

Her  robe  was  spotless  white  ; 
Her  breast  was  radiant  with  the  Cross, 

Her  head  with  living  light. 

Her  eyes  beamed  with  a  sacred  fire. 

And  on  her  shoulders  fair. 
From  underneath  her  golden  crown. 

Clustered  her  golden  hair. 


144  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Tet  on  her  bosom  her  white  hands 

Were  folded  quietly  : 
Tet  was  her  glorious  head  bowed  lozo 

In  deep  humility. 

In  these  extracts  from  the  volume  of  1847  we  see 
more  than  the  germ ;  we  see  the  imperfect  development 
of  two  qualities  which  have  particularly  characterised 
the  poetry  of  Miss  Rossetti — in  the  iirst  an  entirely 
<iirect  and  vivid  mode  of  presenting  to  us  the  impression 
of  richly  coloured  physical  objects,  a  feat  in  which  she 
sometimes  rivals  Keats  and  Tennyson ;  and  in  the 
second  a  brilliant  simplicity  in  the  conduct  of  episodes 
of  a  visionary  character,  and  a  choice  of  expression 
which  is  exactly  in  keeping  with  these,  a  sort  of  Tuscan 
candour,  as  of  a  sacred  picture  in  which  each  saint  or 
angel  is  robed  in  a  dress  of  one  unbroken  colour. 
These  two  qualities  combined,  in  spite  of  their  apparent 
incompatibility — an  austere  sweetness  coupled  with  a 
luscious  and  sensuous  brightness — to  form  one  side  of 
Miss  Rossetti's  curious  poetic  originality. 

Three  years  later,  in  1850,  she  was  already  a  finished 
poet.  That  charming  and  pathetic  failure.  The  Germ^ 
a  forlorn  little  periodical  which  attempted  to  emanate 
from  the  new  group  of  Preraphaelites,  as  they  called 
themselves,  counted  her  among  its  original  contri- 
butors. Her  brother  Gabriel,  indeed,  who  had  already 
written,  in  its  earliest  form,  his  remarkable  poem  of 
The  Blessed  Dautozel,  was  the  central  force  and  prime 
artificer  of  the  movement,  which  had  begun  about  a 


Christina  Rossetti  145 

ycctr  before.  It  was  a  moment  of  transition  in  English 
poetry.  The  old  race  was  dying  in  its  last  representa- 
tive, Wordsworth.  Mr.  Tennyson,  Mr.  Browning,  Miss 
Barrett  were  the  main  figures  of  the  day,  while  the 
conscience  of  young  men  and  women  addicted  to  verse 
was  troubled  with  a  variety  of  heresies,  the  malignity 
of  which  is  hardly  to  be  realised  by  us  after  fifty  years. 
Mr.  Bailey's  Festus  was  a  real  power  for  evil,  strong 
enough  to  be  a  momentary  snare  to  the  feet  of  Tenny- 
son in  writing  Maud,  and  even  of  Browning,  A  host 
of  "Spasmodists,"  as  they  were  presently  called,  suc- 
ceeded in  appalling  the  taste  of  the  age  with  their  vast 
and  shapeless  tragedies,  or  monodramas. 

Then,  with  a  different  voice,  but  equally  far  removed 
from  the  paths  of  correct  tradition  in  verse,  came  Clough, 
singing  in  slovenly  hexameters  of  Oxford  and  the  plea- 
sures of  radical  undergraduates  in  highland  bothies. 
Clough,  with  his  hold  on  reality,  and  his  sympathetic 
modern  accent,  troubled  the  Preraphaelites  a  little  ;  they 
were  less  moved  by  a  far  more  pure  and  exquisite  music, 
a  song  as  of  Simonides  himself,  which  also  reached  them 
from  Oxford,  when  Matthew  Arnold,  in  1849,  made 
his  first  appearance  with  his  lovely  and  long  neglected 
Strayed  Reveller.  Mr,  Coventry  Patmore,  with  his 
Poems  of  1844,  was  a  recognised  elder  brother  of  their 
own,  and  almost  everything  else  which  was  to  be  well 
done  in  verse  for  many  years  was  to  arise  from  among 
themselves,  or  in  emulation  of  them.  So  that  never 
was  periodical  better  named  than  The  Germ,  the  seed 
which  put  torth  two  cotyledons,  and  then  called  itself 

K 


14.6  Critical    Kit-Kats 

Ah  and  Letters :  and  put  lortft  two  more  little  leaves, 
and  then  seemed  to  die. 

Among  the  anonymous  contributions  to  the  first 
number  of  The  Germ — that  for  January,  1850 — are  two 
which  we  know  to  be  Miss  Rossetti's.  These  are, 
"  Where  Sunless  Rivers  Weep,"  and  "  Love,  Strong 
as  Death,  is  Dead."  In  the  February  number,  under 
the  pseudonym  of  Ellen  Alleyn,  she  printed  "A  Pause 
of  Thought,"  -the  song,  "  Oh,  Roses  for  the  Flush  of 
Youth,"  and  "  I  said  of  Laughter,  It  is  Vain."  To  the 
March  number,  then  styled  Art  and  Letters^  Ellen 
Alleyn  contributed  a  long  piece  called  "  Repining," 
which  does  not  seem  to  have  been  reprinted,  and 
"  Sweet  Death  "  ("  The  Sweetest  Blossoms  Die  ").  To 
the  fourth  and  last  number,  in  which  an  alien  and  far 
more  commonplace  influence  may  be  traced  than  in  the 
others,  she  contributed  nothing.  Of  her  seven  pieces, 
however,  printed  in  The  Germ  in  1850,  when  she  was 
twenty,  there  are  five  (if  we  omit  "A  Pause  of 
Thought"  and  "Repining")  which  rank  to  this  day 
among  her  very  finest  lyrics,  and  display  her  st3'le  as 
absolutely  formed.  Though  the  j'oungest  poet  of  the 
confraternity,  she  appears  indeed  in  The  Germ  as  the 
most  finished,  and  even,  for  the  moment,  the  most 
promising,  since  her  brother  Gabriel,  if  the  author  of 
The  Blessed  Damozcl,  was  also  responsible  for  those 
uncouth  Flemish  studies  in  verse  which  he  very  wisely 
refused  in  later  years  to  own  or  to  republish. 

Time  passed,  and  the  obscure  group  of  boys  and 
girls  who  called  themselves  Preraphaelites  found  them- 


Christina  Rossetti  147 

selves  a  centre  of  influence  and  curiosity.  In  poetry, 
as  in  painting  and  sculpture,  they  conquered,  and  more 
readily,  perhaps,  in  their  pupils  than  in  themselves. 
The  first  independent  pubHcations  of  the  school,  at 
least,  came  from  visitors  who  had  been  children  in 
1850,  These  books  were  scarcely  noticed  by  the 
public ;  if  Mr.  Morris's  Defence  of  Guinevere  attracted 
a  few  readers  in  1858,  Mr.  Swinburne's  Queen  Mother 
fell  still-born  from  the  press  in  i860.  These  prepared 
the  way  for  real  and  instantaneous  successes — for  Miss 
Rossetti's  Goblin  Market  in  1862,  for  Mr.  Woolner's 
My  Beautiful  Lady  \w  1863,  for  Mr.  Swinburne's  dazzling 
Atalanta  in  Calydon  in  1865.  At  last,  in  1870,  there 
tardily  appeared,  after  such  expectation  and  tiptoe 
curiosity  as  have  preceded  no  other  book  in  our  gene- 
ration, the  Poems  of  Gabriel  Rossetti. 

It  is  with  these  poets  that  Miss  Rossetti  takes  her 
historical  position,  and  their  vigour  and  ambition  had  a 
various  influence  upon  her  style.  On  this  side  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  association  with  men  so  learned 
and  eager,  so  daring  in  experiment,  so  well  equipped 
in  scholarship,  gave  her  an  instant  and  positive  advan- 
tage. By  nature  she  would  seem  to  be  of  a  cloistered 
and  sequestered  temper,  and  her  genius  was  lifted  on 
this  wave  of  friendship  to  heights  which  it  would  not 
have  dreamed  of  attempting  alone.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  possible  that,  after  the  first  moment,  this  associa- 
tion with  the  strongest  male  talent  of  the  time  has  not 
been  favourable  to  public  appreciation  of  her  work. 
Critics  have  taken  for  granted  that  she  was  a  satellite, 


148  Critical  Kit-Kats 

and  have  been  puzzled  to  notice  her  divergences  from 
the  type.  Of  these  divergences  the  most  striking  is  the 
religious  one.  Neither  Gabriel  Rossetti,  nor  Mr.  Swin- 
burne, nor  Mr.  Morris  has  shown  any  sympathy  with, 
or  any  decided  interest  in,  the  tenets  of  Protestantism. 
Now  Miss  Christina  Rossetti's  poetry  is  not  merely 
Christian  and  Protestant,  it  is  Anglican  ;  nor  her  divine 
works  only,  but  her  secular  also,  bear  the  stamp  of 
uniformity  with  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  England. 
What  is  very  interesting  in  her  poetry  is  the  union  of 
this  fixed  religious  faith  with  a  hold  upon  physical 
beauty  and  the  richer  parts  of  Nature  which  allies  her 
with  her  brother  and  with  their  younger  friends.  She 
does  not  shrink  from  strong  delineation  of  the  pleasures 
of  life  even  when  she  is  denouncing  them.  In  one  of 
the  most  austere  of  her  sacred  pieces,  she  describes  the 
Children  of  the  World  in  these  glowing  verses  : 

Milk-white,  wine-fiushed,  among  the  vines ^ 
Up  and  down  leafing,  to  and  fro. 
Most  glad,  most  full,  made  strong  with  wines. 
Blooming  as  peaches  pearled  with  dew^ 
Their  golden  windy  hair  afloat, 
Love-music  warbling  in  their  throaty 
Young  men  and  women  come  and  go. 

There  is  no  literary  hypocrisy  here,  no  pretence  that 
the  apple  of  life  is  full  of  ashes  ;  and  this  gives  a  start- 
ling beauty,  the  beauty  of  artistic  contrast,  to  the  poet's 
studies  in  morality.  Miss  Rossetti,  indeed,  is  so 
didactic  in  the  undercurrent  of  her  mmd,  so  anxious  to 


Christina  Rossetti  149 

adorn  her  tale  with  a  religious  moral,  that  she  needs 
all  her  art,  all  her  vigorous  estimate  of  physical  love- 
liness, to  make  her  poetry  delightful  as  poetry.  Thu^ 
she  does  make  it  eminently  delightful  merely  proves 
her  extraordinary  native  gift.  The  two  long  pieces  she 
has  written,  her  two  efforts  at  a  long  breath,  are 
sustained  so  well  as  to  make  us  regret  that  she  has  not 
put  out  her  powers  in  the  creation  of  a  still  more  com- 
plete and  elaborated  composition.  Of  these  two  poems 
Goblin  Market  is  by  far  the  more  popular ;  the  other, 
The  Prince's  Progress,  which  appeared  in  1866,  has 
never  attracted  such  attention  as  it  deserves. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  describe  a  poem  so  well  known  | 
to  every  lover  of  verse  as  Goblin  Market.  It  is  one  of 
the  very  few  purely  fantastic  poems  of  recent  times 
which  have  really  kept  up  the  old  tradition  of  humoresque 
literature.  Its  witty  and  fantastic  conception  is  em- 
broidered with  fancies,  descriptions,  peals  of  laughing 
music,  which  clothe  it  as  a  queer  Japanese  figure  may  | 
be  clothed  with  brocade,  so  that  the  entire  effect  at  last  | 
is  beautiful  and  harmonious  without  ever  having  ceased 
to  be  grotesque.  I  confess  that  while  I  dimly  perceive 
the  underlying  theme  to  be  a  didactic  one,  and  nothing 
less  than  the  sacrifice  of  self  by  a  sister  to  recuperate  a 
sister's  virtue,  I  cannot  follow  the  parable  through  all  its 
delicious  episodes.  Like  a  Japanese  work  of  art,  again, 
one  perceives  the  general  intention,  and  one  is  satisfied 
with  the  beauty  of  all  the  detail,  without  comprehending 
or  wishing  to  comprehend  every  part  of  the  execution. 
For  instance,  the  wonderful  scene  in  which  Lizzie  sits 


150  Critical   Kit-Kats 

beleaguered  by  the  goblins,  and  receives  with  hr.rd-shut 
mouth  all  the  syrups  that  they  squeeze  against  her  skin 
— this  from  the  point  of  view  of  poetry  is  perfect,  and 
needs  no  apology  or  commentary;  but  its  place  in  the 
parable  it  would,  surely,  be  extremely  hard  to  find. 
It  is  therefore,  astonishing  to  me  that  the  general  public, 
that  strange  and  unaccountable  entity,  has  chosen  to 
prefer  Goblin  Market^  which  we  might  conceive  to  be 
written  for  poets  alone,  to  The  Princess  Progress,  where 
the  parable  and  the  teaching  are  as  clear  as  noonday. 
The  prince  is  a  handsome,  lazy  fellow,  who  sets  out  late 
upon  his  pilgrimage,  loiters  in  bad  company  by  the 
way,  is  decoyed  by  light  loves,  and  the  hope  of  life, 
and  the  desire  of  wealth,  and  reaches  his  destined 
bride  at  last,  only  to  find  her  dead.  This  has  an  obvious 
moral,  but  it  is  adorned  with  verse  of  the  very  highest 
romantic  beauty.  Every  claim  which  criticism  has  to 
make  for  the  singular  merit  of  Miss  Rossetti  might  be 
substantiated  from  this  little-known  romance,  from 
which  I  must  resist  the  pleasure  of  quoting  more  than 
a  couple  of  stanzas  descriptive  of  daybreak  : 

Jt  the  death  of  night  and  the  birth  of  day  ^ 

When  the  owl  left  off  his  sober  play. 

And  the  bat  hung  himself  out  of  the  waj^-^ 

Woke  the  song  of  mavis  and  merle. 
And  heaven  put  off  its  hodden  grey 
For  mot her-o' -pearl. 

Peeped  up  daisies  here  and  there^ 
Here,  tJ:ere,  and  everywhere : 


Christina  Rossetti  ici 

i  -' 

Rose  a  hopeful  lark  in  the  air^ 

Spreading  out  tozuards  the  sun  his  breast  g 
While  the  moon  set  solemn  and  fair 
Away  in  the  West. 

With  the  apparent  exceptions  of  Goblin  Market  and 
The  Princess  Progress,  both  of  which  indeed  are  of  a 
lyrical  nature,  Miss  Rossetti  has  written  only  lyrics. 
All  poets  are  unequal,  except  the  bad  ones,  who  are 
uniformly  bad.  Miss  Rossetti  indulges  in  the  privilege 
which  Wordsworth,  Burns,  and  so  many  |freat  masters 
have  enjoyed,  of  writing  extremely  flat  and  dull  poems 
at  certain  moments,  and  of  not  perceiving  that  they  are 
dull  or  flat.  She  does  not  err  in  being  mediocre  ;  her 
lyrics  are  bad  or  good,  and  the  ensuing  remarks  deal 
with  that  portion  only  of  her  poems  with  which-^jcriticism 
is  occupied  in  surveying  work  so  admirably  ordinal  as 
hers,  namely,  that  which  is  worthy  of  her  reputation. 
Her  lyrics,  then,  are  eminent  for  their  glow  of  colour- 
ing, their  vivid  and  novel  diction,  and  for  a  certain 
penetrating  accent,  whether  in  joy  or  pain,  which  rivets 
the  attention.  Her  habitual  tone  is  one  of  melancholy 
reverie,  the  pathos  of  which  is  strangely  intensified  by 
her  appreciation  of  beauty  and  pleasure.  There  is  not 
a  chord  of  the  minor  key  in  "  A  Birthday,"  and  yet  the 
impression  which  its  cumulative  ecstasy  leaves  upon 
the  nerves  is  almost  pathetic  : 

My  heart  is  like  a  singing- bird 
Whose  ntJ  is  in  a  watered  shoots 


152  Critical  Kit-Kats 


My  heart  is  like  an  apple-tree 

Whose  boughs  are  bent  with  thick-set  fruit  g 
My  heart  is  like  a  rainbow-shell 

That  paddles  in  a  halcyon  sea  i 
My  heart  is  gladder  than  all  these 

Because  my  love  is  come  to  me. 

Raise  me  a  dais  of  silk  and  dozvn  ; 

Hang  it  with  vair  and  purple  dyes  s 
Carve  it  in  doves  and  pomegranates^ 

And  peacocks  with  a  hundred  eyes  ; 
Work  it  in  gold  and  silver  grapes. 

In  leaves  and  silver  fleurs-de-lys ; 
Because  the  birthday  of  my  life 

Is  come,  my  love  is  come  to  me. 

It  15  very  rarely,  indeed,  that  the  poet  strikes  so  jubilant 
a  note  as  this.  Her  customary  music  is  sad,  often 
poignantly  sad.  Her  lyrics  have  that  desiderium,  that 
obstinate  longing  for  something  lost  out  of  life,  which 
Shelley's  have,  although  her  Christian  faith  gives  her 
regret  a  more  resigned  and  sedate  character  than  his 
possesses.  In  the  extremely  rare  gift  of  song-writing 
Miss  Rossetti  has  been  singularly  successful.  Of  the 
poets  of  our  time  she  stands  next  to  Lord  Tennyson  in 
this  branch  of  the  art,  in  the  spontaneous  and  complete 
quality  of  her  lieder,  and  in  their  propriety  for  the  purpose 
of  being  sung.  At  various  times  this  art  has  flourished 
in  our  race  ;  eighty  years  ago,  most  of  the  poets  could 
write  songs,  but  it  is  almost  a  lost  art  in  our  generation. 
The  songs  of  our  living  poets  are   apt   to   be   over- 


Christina   Rossetti  153 

polished  or  under-polished,  so  simple  as  to  be  bald,  or 
else  so  elaborate  as  to  be  wholly  unsuitable  for  singing. 
But  such  a  song  as  this  is  not  unworthy  to  be  classed 
with  the  melodies  of  Shakespeare,  of  Burns,  of  Shelley  : 

04  roses  for  the  flush  of  youth. 

And  laurel  for  the  perfect  prime  ; 
But  pluck  an  ivy-branch  for  me 

Grown  old  before  my  time. 

Oh,  violets  for  the  grave  of  youth. 

And  bay  for  those  dead  in  their  prime  ; 

Give  me  the  withered  leaves  I  chose 
Before  in  the  old  time. 

Her  music  is  very  delicate,  and  it  is  ^o  small  praise 
to  her  that  she  it  is  who,  of  living  verse-writers,  has 
left  the  strongest  mark  on  the  metrical  nature  of  that 
miraculous  artificer  of  verse,  Mr.  Swinburne.  In  his 
Poems  and  Ballads,  as  other  critics  have  long  ago 
pointed  out,  as  was  shown  when  that  volume  first 
appeared,  several  of  Miss  Rossetti's  discoveries  were 
transferred  to  his  more  scientific  and  elaborate  system 
of  harmonies,  and  adapted  to  more  brilliant  effects. 
The  reader  of  Mr.  Swinburne  would  judge  that  of  all 
his  immediate  contemporaries  Miss  Rossetti  and  the 
late  Mr.  FitzGerald,  the  translator  of  Omar  Khayyam, 
had  been  those  who  had  influenced  his  style  the  most. 
Miss  Rossetti,  however,  makes  no  pretence  to  elaborate 
metrical  effects ;  she  is  even  sometimes  a  little  naive, 
a  little  careless,  in  her  rough,  rhymeless  endings,  and 


154  Critical  Kit-Kats 

metrically  her  work  was  better  in  her  youth  than  it 
has  been  since. 

The  sonnets  present  points  of  noticeable  interest. 
They  are  few,  but  they  are  of  singular  excellence. 
They  have  this  peculiarity,  that  many  of  them  are 
objective.  Now  the  great  bulk  of  good  sonnets  is 
purely  subjective — occupied  with  reverie,  with  regret, 
with  moral  or  religious  enthusiasm.  Even  the  cele- 
brated sonnets  of  Gabriel  Rossetti  will  be  found  to  be 
mainly  subjective.  On  the  question  of  the  relative  merit 
of  the  sonnets  of  the  brother  and  the  sister,  I  hold  a  view 
in  which  I  believe  that  few  will  at  present  coincide  ; 
I  am  certain  Miss  Rossetti  herself  will  not.  If  she 
honours  me  by  reading  these  pages,  she  may  possibly 
recollect  a  conversation,  far  more  important  to  me  of 
course  than  to  her,  which  we  held  in  1870,  soon  after 
I  had  first  the  privilege  of  becoming  known  to  her.  I 
was  venturing  to  praise  her  sonnets,  when  she  said, 
with  the  sincerity  of  evident  conviction,  that  they 
"  could  only  be  admired  before  Gabriel,  by  printing  his 
in  the  Fortnightly  Review^  showed  the  source  of  their 
inspiration."  I  was  sure  then,  and  I  am  certain  now, 
that  she  was  wrong.  The  sonnets  are  not  the  product 
of,  they  do  not  even  bear  any  relation  to  those  of,  her 
brother. 

Well  do  I  recollect  the  publication  of  these  sonnets 
of  Gabriel  Rossetti,  in  1869,  when,  at  a  moment  when 
curiosity  regarding  the  mysterious  painter-poet  was  at 
its  height,  they  suddenly  blossomed  forth  in  a  certain 
number  of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  in  whose  solemn 


Christina  Rossetti  155 

paees  we  were  wont  to  see  nothing  lighter  or  more 
literary  than  esoteric  poHtics  and  the  prose  mysteries 
of  positivism.  We  were  dazzled  by  their  Italian 
splendour  of  phraseology,  amazed  that  such  sonorous 
anapests,  that  such  a  burst  of  sound,  should  be  caged 
within  the  sober  limits  of  the  sonnet,  fascinated  by 
the  tenderness  of  the  long-drawn  amorous  rhetoric  ; 
but  there  were  some  of  us  who  soon  recovered  an 
equilibrium  of  taste,  in  which  it  seemed  that  the 
tradition  of  the  English  sonnet,  its  elegance  of  phrase, 
its  decorum  of  movement,  were  too  rudely  displaced  by 
this  brilliant  Italian  intruder,  and  that  underneath  the 
melody  and  the  glowing  diction,  the  actual  thought, 
the  valuable  and  intelligible  residue  of  poetry,  was  too 
often  much  more  thin  than  Rossetti  allowed  it  to  be 
in  the  best  of  his  other  poems.  As  to  Gabriel  Rossetti's 
sonnets  being  his  own  best  work,  as  has  been  asserted, 
I  for  one  must  entirely  and  finally  disagree.  I  believe 
that  of  all  his  poetry  they  form  the  section  which  will 
be  the  first  to  tarnish.  Quite  otherwise  is  it  with  Miss 
Christina  Rossetti.  It  is  in  certain  of  her  objective 
sonnets  that  her  touch  is  most  firm  and  picturesque, 
her  intelligence  most  weighty,  and  her  style  most 
completely  characteristic.  The  reader  need  but  turn 
to  "  After  Death,"  "On  the  Wing,"  "Venus's  Looking- 
Glass"  (in  the  volume  of  1875),  and  the  marvellous 
"A  Triad"*  to  concede  the  truth  of  this  ;  while  in  the 


*  Why  has  Miss  Rossetti  allowed  this  piece,  one  of  the  gems  of  the  volutna 
of  1862,  to  drop  out  of  her  collected  poems? 


156  Critical  Kit-Kats 

more  obvious  subjective  manner  of  sonnet-writing  she 
is  one  of  the  most  successful  poets  of  our  time.  In 
"  The  World,"  where  she  may  be  held  to  come  closest  to 
her  brother  as  a  sonneteer,  she  seems  to  me  to  surpass 
him. 

From  the  first  a  large  section  of  Miss  Rossetti's  work 
has  been  occupied  with  sacred  and  devotional  themes. 
Through  this  most  rare  and  difficult  department  of  the 
art,  which  so  few  essay  without  breaking  on  the  Scylla 
of  doctrine  on  the  one  hand,  or  being  whirled  in  the 
Charybdis  of  commonplace  dulness  on  the  other,  she 
has  steered  with  extraordinary  success.  Her  sacred 
poems  are  truly  sacred,  and  yet  not  unpoetical.  As  a 
religious  poet  of  our  time  she  has  no  rival  but  Cardinal 
Newman,  and  it  could  only  be  schismatic  prejudice  or 
absence  of  critical  faculty  which  should  deny  her  a 
place,  as  a  poet,  higher  than  that  of  our  exquisite  master 
of  prose.  To  find  her  exact  parallel  it  is  at  once  her 
strength  and  her  snare  that  we  must  go  back  to  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  She  is  the  sister  of 
George  Herbert ;  she  is  of  the  family  of  Crashaw,  of 
Vaughan,  of  Wither.  The  metrical  address  of  Herbert 
has  been  perilously  attractive  to  her ;  the  broken  stanzas 
of  "  Consider  "  or  of  "  Long  Barren  "  remind  us  of  the 
age  when  pious  aspirations  took  the  form  of  wings,  or 
hour-glasses,  or  lamps  of  the  temple.  The  most  thrill- 
ing and  spirited  of  her  sacred  poems  have  been  free 
from  these  Marini-like  subtleties.  There  is  only  what 
is  best  111  the  quaint  and  fervent  school  of  Herbert 
visible  in  such  pieces  as  "The  Three  Enemies,"  *'A 


Christina  Rossetti  157 

Rose  Plant  in  Jericho,"  "Passing  Away,saith  the  World," 
and  "  Up  Hill."  Still  more  completely  satisfactory, 
perhaps,  is  "  Amor  Mundi,"  first  included  in  the  Poems 
of  1875,  which  takes  rank  as  one  of  the  most  solemn, 
imaginative,  and  powerful  lyrics  on  a  purely  religious 
subject  ever  printed  in  England. 


These  critical  and  biographical  remarks  were  mainly 
written  in  1882,  but  not  printed  until  1893.  They  were 
undertaken  at  the  suggestion  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti, 
who  was  kind  enough  to  consider  that  I  had  an  appre- 
ciation of  his  sister  such  as  is  more  common  now  than 
fourteen  3^ears  ago.  They  were  scarcely  finished  when 
the  news  came  of  his  death,  and  in  the  agitation  pro- 
duced by  that  event,  I  thought  it  better  to  put  aside  for 
a  time  my  criticism  of  Christina. 

It  will,  perhaps,  be  not  inappropriate  for  me  to  record 
here  my  few  personal  recollections  of  this  illustrious 
lady.  It  was  not  my  privilege  to  meet  her  more  than 
some  dozen  times  in  the  flesh,  and  those  times  mainly 
in  the  winter  of  1870-71.  But  on  most  of  those  occa- 
sions I  had  the  good  fortune  to  converse  with  her  for  a 
long  while  ;  and  up  to  a  few  mon  ths  before  her  death 
we  corresponded  at  not  particularly  distant  intervals. 
She  is  known  to  the  world,  and  very  happily  known,  by 
her  brother's  portraits  of  her,  and  in  particular  by  the 
singularly  beautiful  chalk  drawing  in  profile,  dated  1866. 
I  think  that  tasteful  arrangement  of  dress  might  have 
made  her  appear  a  noble  and  even  a  romantic  figure  so 


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late  as  1870,  but,  as  I  suppose,  an  ascetic  or  almost 
methodistical  reserve  caused  her  to  clothe  herself  in  a 
style,  or  with  an  absence  of  style,  which  was  really 
distressing;  her  dark  hair  was  streaked  across  her  olive 
forehead,  and  turned  up  in  a  chignon  ;  the  high  stiff 
dress  ended  in  a  hard  collar  and  plain  brooch,  the 
extraordinarily  ordinary  skirt  sank  over  a  belated  crino- 
line, and  these  were  inflictions  hard  to  bear  from  the 
high-priestess  of  Preraphaelitism.  When  it  is  added 
that  her  manner,  from  shyness,  was  of  a  portentous 
solemnity,  that  she  had  no  small  talk  whatever,  and 
that  the  common  topics  of  the  day  appeared  to  be 
entirely  unknown  to  her,  it  will  be  understood  that  she 
was  considered  highly  formidable  by  the  young  and  the 
flighty.  I  have  seen  her  sitting  alone,  in  the  midst  of 
a  noisy  drawing-room,  like  a  pillar  of  cloud,  a  Sibyl 
whom  no  one  had  the  audacity  to  approach. 

Yet  a  kinder  or  simpler  soul,  or  one  less  concentrated 
on  self,  or  of  a  humbler  sweetness,  never  existed.  And 
to  an  enthusiast,  who  broke  the  bar  of  conventional 
chatter,  and  ventured  on  real  subjects,  her  heart  seemed 
to  open  like  an  unsealed  fountain.  The  heavy  lids  of 
her  weary-looking,  bistred,  Italian  eyes  would  lift  and 
display  her  ardour  as  she  talked  of  the  mysteries  of 
poetry  and  religion.  My  visits  to  her,  in  her  mother's 
house,  56  Euston  Square,  were  abruptly  brought  to  a 
close.  On  May  i,  1871,  I  received  a  note  from  her  elder 
sister  Maria  warning  me  not  to  dine  with  them  on  the 
following  Tuesday,  as  her  sister  was  suddenly  and 
alarmingly  ill.     This  was,  in  fact,  the  m3'sterious  com- 


Christina  Rossetti  159 

plaint  which  thenceforth  kept  Christina  bedridden,  and 
sometimes  at  the  point  of  death,  for  two  years.  She 
recovered,  but  the  next  time  I  saw  her — she  was  well 
enough  to  be  working  in  the  British  Museum  in  the 
summer  of  1873 — she  was  so  strangely  altered  as  to  be 
scarcely  recognisable. 

By  degrees,  to  my  great  satisfaction,  Miss  Christin^a 
came  to  look  upon  me  as  in  some  little  sense  her 
champion  in  the  press.  "  The  pen  you  use  for  me  has 
always  a  soft  rather  than  a  hard  nib,"  she  said,  and  in 
truth,  whenever  I  found  an  opportunity  of  praising  her 
pure  and  admirable  poems,  I  was  not  slow  to  employ 
it.  That  I  was  not  exempt,  however,  from  an  occasional 
peck  even  from  this  gentlest  of  turtle-doves,  a  letter 
(written  in  December  1 875)  reminds  me.  I  had  reviewed 
somewhere  the  first  collected  edition  of  her  Poems^ 
and  I  had  ventured  to  make  certain  reservations. 
There  are  some  points  of  valuable  self-analysis  which 
make  a  part  of  this  letter  proper  to  be  quoted  here : 

*•  Save  me  from  my  friends  1  You  are  certainly  up 
in  your  subject,  and  as  I  might  have  fared  worse  in 
other  hands  I  will  not  regret  that  rival  reviewer  [Mr. 
Theodore  Watts]  who  was  hindered  from  saying  his 
say.  As  to  the  lamented  early  lyrics,  I  do  not  suppose 
myself  to  be  the  person  least  tenderly  reminiscent  of 
them  [I  had  grumbled  at  the  excision  of  some  admirable 
favourites]  ;  but  it  at  any  rate  appears  to  be  the 
commoner  fault  amongst  verse-writers  to  write  what  is 
not  worth  writing,  than  to  suppress  what  would  merit 
hearers.     I  for  my  part  am  a  great   believer  in  the 


i6o  Critical  Kit-Kats 

genuine  poetic  impulse  belonging  (very  often)  to  the 
spring  and  not  to  the  autumn  of  life,  and  some  estab- 
lished reputations  fail  to  shake  me  in  this  opinion ;  at 
any  rate,  if  so  one  feels  the  possibility  to  stand  in 
one's  own  case,  then  I  vote  that  the  grace  of  silence 
succeed  the  grace  of  song.  By  all  which  I  do  not 
bind  myself  to  unbroken  silence,  but  meanwhile  I 
defend  my  position — or,  you  may  retort,  I  do  not 
defend  it.  By-the-by,  your  upness  does  not  prevent  my 
protesting  that  Edith  and  Maggie  did  not  dream  or  even 
nap ;  Flora  did  ;  but  have  I  not  caught  you  napping  ? 
Do,  pray,  come  and  see  me  and  we  will  not  fight." 

It  is  difficult  to  speak  of  either  of  the  Rossetti  ladies 
without  a  reference  to  the  elder  sister,  whom  also  I  had 
the  privilege  of  knowing  in  early  days.  She  left  upon 
me  the  impression  of  stronger  character,  though  of 
narrower  intellect  and  infinitely  poorer  imagination.  I 
formed  the  idea,  I  know  not  whether  with  justice,  that 
the  pronounced  high-church  views  of  Maria,  who  throve 
on  ritual,  starved  the  less  pietistic,  but  painfully  con- 
scientious nature  of  Christina.  The  influence  of  Maria 
Francesca  Rossetti  on  her  sister  seemed  to  be  like  that 
of  Newton  upon  Cowper,  a  species  of  police  surveillance 
exercised  by  a  hard,  convinced  mind  over  a  softer  and 
more  fanciful  one.  Miss  Maria  Rossetti,  who  generally 
needed  the  name  of  Dante  to  awaken  her  from  a  certain 
social  torpor,  died  in  1876,  but  not  until  she  had  set 
her  seal  on  the  religious  habits  of  her  sister.  Such, 
at  least,  was  the  notion  which  I  formed,  perhaps  on 
slight  premises. 


Christina  Rossetti  i6i 

That  the  conscience  of  the  younger  sister  was,  in 
middle  life,  so  tender  as  to  appe?r  almost  morbid,  no 
one,  I  think,  will  deny.  I  recall  an  amusing  instance 
of  it.  In  the  winter  of  1874,  I  was  asked  to  secure 
some  influential  signatures  to  a  petition  against  the 
destruction  of  a  part  of  the  New  Forest.  Mr.  Swin- 
burne promised  me  his,  if  I  could  induce  Miss  Christina 
Rossetti  to  give  hers,  suggesting  as  he  did  so,  that  the 
feat  might  not  be  an  easy  one.  In  fact,  I  found  that 
no  little  palaver  was  necessary ;  but  at  last  she  was  so 
far  persuaded  of  the  innocence  of  the  protest  that  she 
wrote  Chr;  she  then  stopped,  dropped  the  pen,  and 
said  very  earnestly,  "  Are  you  sure  that  they  do  not 
propose  to  build  churches  on  the  land?"  After  a 
long  time,  I  succeeded  in  convincing  her  that  such  a 
scheme  was  not  thought  of,  and  she  proceeded  to 
write  istina  G.  Ros,  and  stopped  again.  "  Nor  school- 
houses  ? "  fluctuating  with  tremulous  scruple.  At 
length  she  finished  the  signature,  and  I  carried  the 
parchment  off  to  claim  the  fulfilment  of  Mr.  Swin- 
burne's promise.  And  the  labourer  felt  that  he  was 
worthy  of  his  hire. 

On  the  6th  of  July,  1876,  I  saw  Christina  Rossetti 
for  the  last  time.  I  suppose  that  her  life,  during  the 
last  twenty  years  of  it,  was  as  sequestered  as  that  of 
any  pious  woman  in  a  religious  house.  She  stirred 
but  little,  I  fancy,  from  her  rooms  save  to  attend  the 
services  of  the  Anglican  church.  That  her  mind  con- 
tinued humane  and  simple  her  successive  publications 
and  her  kind  and  sometimes   playful  letters  proved. 

I- 


1 62  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Misfortunes  attended  her  family,  and  she  who  had  been 
the  centre  of  so  eager  and  vivid  a  group,  lived  to  find 
herself  almost  solitary.  At  length,  on  the  29th  of 
December,  1894,  after  prolonged  sufferings  borne  with 
infinite  patience,  this  great  writer,  who  was  also  a 
great  saint,  passed  into  the  region  of  her  visions. 


LORD   DE   TABLEY 


Lord  De  Tabley 


A    PORTRAIT 

It  will  not  be  disputed,  I  think,  by  any  one  who  en- 
joyed the  friendship  of  the  third  Lord  De  Tabley 
that  no  more  singular,  more  complicated,  more  pathetic 
nature  has  been — I  dare  not  say  revealed — but  indi- 
cated to  us  in  these  late  times.  His  mind  was  like  a 
jewel  with  innumerable  facets,  all  slightly  blurred  or 
misted ;  or  perhaps  it  would  be  a  juster  illustration  to 
compare  his  character  to  an  opal,  where  all  the  colours 
lie  perdue,  drowned  in  a  milky  mystery,  and  so  arranged 
that  to  a  couple  of  observers,  simultaneously  bending 
over  it,  the  prevalent  hue  shall  in  one  case  seem  a  pale 
green,  in  the  other  a  fiery  crimson.  This  complication 
of  Lord  De  Tabley's  emotional  experience,  the  ardour 
of  his  designs,  the  languor  of  his  performance,  the 
astonishing  breadth  and  variety  of  his  sympathies,  his 
intense  personal  reserve,  the  feverish  activity  of  his 
intellectual  life,  the  universality  of  his  knowledge,  like 
that  of  a  magician,  the  abysses  of  his  ignorance,  like 
those  of  a  child,  all  these  contrary  elements  fused  in 
and  veiled  by  a  sort  of  radiant  dimness,  made  his 
nature  one  of  the  most  extraordinary,  because  the 
most  inscrutable,  that  I  have  ever  known.     Tennyson 


1 66  Critical  Kit-Kats 

said  to  me  of  Lord  De  Tabley,  in  l888,  "He  is 
Faunus  ;  he  is  a  woodland  creature  1 "  That  was  one 
aspect,  noted  with  great  acumen.  But  that  was  a 
single  aspect.  He  was  also  a  scholar  of  extreme 
elegance,  a  numismatist  and  a  botanist  of  exact  and 
minute  accomplishment,  the  shyest  of  recluses,  the  most 
playful  of  companions,  the  most  melancholy  of  solitaries, 
above  all  and  most  of  all,  yet  in  a  curiously  phantasmal 
way,  a  poet.  It  would  need  the  hand  of  Balzac  to 
draw  together  into  a  portrait  threads  so  slight,  so  deli- 
cately elastic,  and  so  intricately  intertwined.  When 
all  should  be  said,  however,  in  the  most  fastidious 
language,  something  would  escape,  and  that  would  be 
the  essential  being  of  the  strangest  and  the  most 
shadowy  of  men. 


John  Byrne  Leicester  Warren,  the  third  and  last 
Baron  De  Tabley,  was  born  at  Tabley  House,  Cheshire, 
on  April  26,  1835.  He  was  the  eldest  son,  and  his 
mother,  Catherina  Barbara,  daughter  of  Jerome,  Count 
De  Salis,  from  whom  he  inherited  his  sensibility  and 
his  imagination,  gave,  I  have  heard,  to  the  ceremony 
of  his  baptism  something  of  a  romantic  character,  his 
godfather,  Lord  Zouche,  having  brought  water  from 
the  river  Jordan  for  the  christening.  For  the  first 
twelve  or  thirteen  years  of  his  life,  until  he  went  to 
Eton,  indeed,  he  lived  mostly  with  his  mother  in  the 
south  of  Europe,  and  faint  impressions  of  this  childish 


Lord  De  Tabley  167 

exile  seemed  to  be  always  returning  to  him  in  later 
life. 

In  these  early  days  in  Italy  and  Germany  the 
foundation  was  laid  of  his  love  of  botany,  coins, 
minerals,  and'  fine  art,  by  the  companionship  of  his 
godfather,  then  Robert  Curzon,  who  travelled  with 
his  parents,  and  who  bought  for  them  the  beautiful 
Italian  things — enamels,  majolica,  medals,  and  statuettes 
— which  are  now  the  ornament  of  Tabley  House.  He 
was  a  finished  connoisseur,  and  in  his  company  the 
little  Johnny  visited  old  shops  and  museums,  eager  to 
begin,  at  ten  years  of  age,  a  collection  of  his  own.  He 
was  meanwhile  being  very  carefully  prepared  for  Eton. 

In  1845  th^  death  of  his  younger  brother  made 
centre  about  John  Warren  the  hopes  of  the  family, 
and  no  more  male  children  were  born  to  his  father. 
From  Eton  he  proceeded  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 
Among  his  close  Oxford  friends,  there  survive  Sir 
Henry  Longley,  who  is  now  his  executor,  and  Sir 
Baldwyn  Leigh  ton,  who,  in  1864,  became  his  brother- 
in-law.  Henry  Cowper,  Lord  Edward  Clinton,  and 
the  late  Lord  Lothian  were  among  his  close  companions. 
Prince  Frederick  of  Holstein,  who  died  some  ten  years 
ago,  was  a  very  great  friend  up  to  the  last.  But  by 
far  the  dearest  of  his  college  intimates  was  George 
Fortescue,  a  young  man  of  extraordinary  promise,  a 
few  weeks  older  than  himself,  who  awakened  in  Warren 
the  passion  for  poetry,  and  was  all  to  him  that  Arthur 
Hallam  was  to  Tennyson.  Fortescue  would,  perhaps, 
have  been  a  poet  had  he  lived  ;  at  all  events,  the  iwo 


1 68  Critical  Kit-Kats 

friends  wrote  verses  in  secret,  and,  as  shall  presently 
be  told,  in  secret  published  them.  This  delightful 
association,  however,  was  suddenly  snapped ;  on 
November  2,  1859,  George  Fortescue  lost  his  footing 
while  climbing  a  mast  on  board  the  yacht  of  the  late 
Earl  of  Drogheda  in  the  Mediterranean,  fell,  and  was 
killed.  This  incident  was  one  from  which  John 
Warren  never  entirely  recovered ;  after  the  first  agony 
of  grief  he  mentioned  his  friend  no  more,  and  would 
fain  have  obliterated  his  very  memory.  ^ 

Before  this  deplorable  catastrophe,  however,  Warren 
had  entered  life.  He  had  taken  his  degree  in  1856,  with 
a  double  second-class  in  classics  and  modern  history. 
In  the^autumn  of  1858  Lord  Stratford  de  RedclifFe, 
going  "Sut^to  Turkey  for  the  last  time,  to  bid  farewell  to 
the  Sultan,  was  permitted  to  take  with  him  three  unpaid 
temporary  attaches.  He  chose  John  Warren,  Lord 
Sandwich  (then  Lord  Hinchinbrooke),  and  Mr.  J.  R. 
Swinton,  the  portrait-painter.  The  visit  to  Constan- 
tinople was,  on  the  whole,  fairly  agreeable.  Warren 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Lord  Strangford,  with  whom 
he  found  himself  infinitely  in  sympathy,  and  whose 
close  friend  he  remained  until  Lord  Strangford's  un- 
timely death.  He  went  reluctantly,  but  Lord  Strang- 
ford's companionship  was  a  joy  to  him,  and  as  numis- 
matics were  now  the  passion  of  his  life,  he  was  able  to 
dig  in  the  Troad  for  the  coins  of  Asia  Minor,  and  to  scour 
the  bazaars  of  Stamboul  for  Greek  federal  moneys.  The 
months  spent  in  Turkey  were  not  without  stimulus  and 
interest ;  unhappily  he  suffered  from  dysentery  and  had 


Lord  De  Tabley  169 

to  come  home.  This  disease  he  never  entirely  con- 
quered ;  only  the  other  day  he  wrote  from  Ryde,  *'  I  am 
just  as  bad  as  I  was  with  the  Cannings  at  Constan- 
tinople." 

After  his  return  to  England,  the  shock  of  Fortescue's 
death  at  first  unfitted  him  for  all  mental  exertion.  But 
he  struggled  against  his  unhappiness,  continued  his 
numismatic  studies,  seriously  determined  to  become  a 
poet,  and  began  to  see  a  little  more  of  that  Cheshire  life, 
in  his  father's  noble  old  house,  which  hitherto  he  had 
known  so  little.  His  talents  attracted  the  attention  of 
family  friends  and  neighbours,  such  as  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  Lord  Houghton,  with  both  of  whom,  but  especially 
with  the  former,  he  became  on  intimate  terms.  He  was 
^called  to  the  Bar  in  i860.  The  Cheshire  Yeomanry 
had  its  headquarters  in  Tabley  Park,  and  John  Warren 
was  first  an  officer  in,  and  then  captain  of  it,  until  he 
came  into  the  title  in  1887,  when,  to  the  regret  of  the' 
neighbourhood,  he  gave  up  this  local  interest.  All  these 
things  will  sound  strange  to  those  who  only  knew  Lord 
De  Tabley  as  a  poet ;  still  stranger  to  those  who  knew 
him  as  a  man  may  sound  the  fact  that  in  1868,  urged  by 
his  father,  and  under  the  particular  segis  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, he  unsuccessfully  contested  Mid-Cheshire  in  the 
Liberal  interest.  What  is  less  known  is  that,  a  little 
while  before  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  Home  Rule  Bill, 
Warren  had  determined  to  try  for  a  seat  again  ;  but 
events  presently  converted  him  into  a  Liberal  Unionist. 
At  his  father's  second  marriage  in  1871,  he  left  hi3 
home  in  Cheshire,  and  went  to  reside  in  London. 


170  Critical  Kit-Kats 

In  the  later  sixties,  when  he  was  more  and  more 
devoting  himself  to  poetry  and  science,  he  was  less  of 
of  a  recluse  than  at  any  other  period  of  his  life.  After 
the  publication  of  his  Philocktes  in  1867,  the  late  Lord 
Houghton  introduced  him  to  Tennyson,  who  was  always 
a  warm  admirer  of  his  poetry.  Warren's  acquaintance 
with  Tennyson  became  almost  intimate  for  seven  or 
eight  years,  although  he  could  not  quite  get  over  a  certain 
terror  of  that  formidable  bard.  (After  1 880,  I  think, 
he  never  saw  him.)  Several  incidents,  among  which  I 
will  only  mention  the  death  of  his  mother  in  February, 
1869,  and  of  his  sister,  Lady  Bathurst,  in  1872,  tended 
to  deepen  and  irritate  his  melancholy,  which  had  already 
become  chronic  when  I  first  knew  him  in  1875.  Suc- 
cessive annoyances  and  disappointments  so  fostered 
this  condition,  that  about  1880  he  practically  disappeared. 
That  was  the  beginning  of  the  time  to  which  Sir  Mount- 
stuart  Grant  Duff  refers,  in  the  valuable  and  interesting 
notice  of  De  Tabley  which  he  contributed  to  the  Spec- 
tator of  December  7,  1895,  when  he  says  that  people 
declared  **  Warren  has  two  intimate  friends.  The  first 
he  has  not  seen  for  five  years,  the  second  for  six." 

The  death  of  his  father,  in  1887,  roused  him  from 
his  social  lethargy.  He  found  the  estate  practically  in- 
solvent, and  only  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  whole  of  his 
own  private  fortune,  and  the  greatest  economy  during 
the  remainder  of  his  life,  was  he  able  to  prevent  the 
sale  and  secure  the  retention  of  the  family  mansion.  In 
1893  the  success  of  his  Poems  gave  him  an  instant  of 
fame,  which  greatly  comforted  and  cheered  him.     That 


Lord  De  Tabley  171 

year  was  probably,  on  the  whole,  the  brightest  of  his 
life.  But  he  was  already  looking  old,  and  those  who 
have  seen  him  ever  since  at  short  intervals  must  have 
noticed  how  rapidly  he  was  ageing  and  weakening. 
When,  this  last  summer,  he  lunched  with  me  to  meet 
Mr.  Bailey,  the  author  of  Festus,  a  man  more  than  twenty 
years  his  senior,  I  could  but  wonder  whether  any 
stranger  could  have  conceived  Lord  De  Tabley  to  be  the 
younger.  All  this  autumn  his  face  had  the  solemn  Tro- 
phonian  pallor,  the  look  of  the  man  who  has  seen  Death 
in  the  cave.  Yet  the  end  was  unexpected.  He  was 
planning  to  spend  the  winter  at  Bournemouth  with  his 
sister,  Lady  Leighton,  but  lingered  on,  as  his  wont  was, 
in  his  lodgings  at  Ryde.  He  was  positively  ill  but  a 
day  or  two,  sinking  rapidly,  and  passing  away,  without 
suffering,  on  November  22,  1895,  in  his  sixty-first  year. 
The  coffin  was  brought  to  his  beautiful  home  in  Cheshire, 
and  buried  in  the  grass  of  Little  Peover  churchyard, 
where  he  had  wished  to  lie.  Earth  from  the  Holy  Land 
was  sprinkled  over  him,  and  the  grave  was  filled  up  with 
clods  from  a  certain  covert  where  he  had  loved  to 
botanise.  Such  is  the  meagre  outline  of  a  life,  whose 
adventures  were  almost  wholly  those  of  the  soul. 


John  Warren's  first  enterprise  in  the  world  of  pub- 
lished poetry  was  a  very  obscure  little  volume,  issued  in 
1859,  under  the  title  of  Poems.  By  G.  F.  Preston. 
This  was  the  conjoint  pseudonym  of  two  Oxford  friends, 


172  Critical  KIt-Kats 

of  whom  George  Fortescue  was  the  other.  A  rarer 
volume  scarcely  exists,  for  nobody  bought  it,  and  almost 
every  copy  disappeared,  or  was  destroyed.  It  is  a  mere 
curiosity,  for  it  contains  not  a  single  piece  that  deserves 
to  live,  although  it  is  interesting  to  find  in  it  several 
subjects  and  titles  which  Warren  afterwards  used  again. 
Immense  is  the  advance,  in  every  direction,  marked  by 
Praeterita^  a  volume  entirely  by  Warren,  published  in 
1863,  under  another  pseudonym,  "  William  Lancaster." 
The  moment  was  not  favourable  to  the  issue  of  poetry 
of  a  contemplative  and  descriptive  order.  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing and  Clough  were  lately  dead  ;  Tennyson,  while 
preparing  the  Enoch  Ardcn  volume,  had  published 
nothing  since  The  Idylls  of  the  King;  Matthew  Arnold, 
who  appeared  to  have  given  up  the  practice  of  poetry, 
in  which  no  one  encouraged  him,  was  a  professor  at 
Oxford  ;  Robert  Browning  had  been  silent  since  the  cold 
reception  of  Men  and  Women.  It  was  a  dead  time, 
before  the  revival  and  wild  revels  of  the  Preraphael- 
ites.  No  verse  that  was  not  smoothly  Tennysonian 
and  mildly  idyllic  was  in  favour  with  the  public. 

Warren's  modest  volume  had  no  success,  nor  is  it 
probable  that  it  has  ever  possessed  more  than  a  very 
few  readers.  Yet  its  merits  should  have  been  patent 
to  at  least  one  reviewer.  The  splendour  of  diction 
which  was  afterwards  to  distinguish  his  poetry  Warren 
had  not  yet  discovered.  Praeterita  is  noticeable  mainly 
for  two  qualities — for  the  close  and  individual  observa- 
tion of  natural  phenomena,  in  which  not  even  Tenny- 
son excelled  Lord  De  Tabley,   and  for  the   technical 


Lord  De  Tabley  173 

beauty  of  the  blank  verse  pieces,  which  are  usually 
better  made  than  the  lyrical.  Of  the  former  of  those 
qualities  specimens  may  be  given  almost  at  random,  as 
this  of  a  frosty  day  in  the  country  : 

When  the  waves  are  solid  foor. 

And  the  clods  are  iron-bound^ 
And  the  boughs  are  cry  stair d  hoary 

And  the  red  leaf  nailed  aground } 

When  the  fieldfare' s  fight  is  slow, 

And  a  rosy  vapour-rim. 
Now  the  sun  is  small  and  low. 

Belts  along  the  region  dim  ; 

When  the  ice-crack  flies  and  flaws ^ 
Shore  to  shore,  with  thunder  shock, 

"Deeper  than  the  evening  daws, 
Clearer  than  the  village  clock. 

(De  Tabley  was,  like  Wordsworth,  a  bold  and  graceful 
skater,  and  used,  it  is  said,  to  cut  his  own  name  in  full 
on  the  ice  of  Tabley  Lake  without  pausing) ;  or  this 
description  of  dawn : 

ere  heaven's  stubborn  bar  and  subtle  screen 
Crumbled  in  purple  chains  ofl  sailing  shower 
And  bared  the  captive  morning  in  his  cell; 

while  his  mosaic  of  delicate  and  minute  observation  of 
aerial  phenomena  is  displayed  in  conjunction  with  the 
excellence  of  his  blank  verse  in  this  study  of  "  tremulous 
evening" : 


174  Critical  Kit-Kats 

The  weeds  of  night  coast  round  her  lucid  edge. 

Yoked  under  bulks  of  tributary  cloud; 

The  leaves  are  shaken  on  the  forest  flowers. 

And  silent  as  the  silence  of  a  shrine 

Lies  a  great  power  oj  sunset  on  the  groves. 

Greyly  the  fingered  shadows  dwell  between 

J  he  reaching  chestnut-branches.      Grey  the  mask 

Of  twilight,  and  the  bleak  unmellow  speed 

Of  blindness  on  the  visage  of  fresh  hills. 

Here  every  epithet  is  felt,  is  observed ;  and  the 
volume  is  full  of  such  pictures  and  of  such  verse. 
Nevertheless,  the  book  is  not  interesting ;  its  beauties 
are  easily  overlooked,  and  we  feel,  in  glancing  back, 
that  it  gave  an  inadequate  impression  of  its  author's 
powers.  Similar  characteristics  marked  the  volumes 
called  Eclogues  and  Monodramas  and  Studies  in  Verse. 

Then  came  the  publication  of  Atalanta  in  Calydon, 
and  Warren's  eyes  were  dazzled  with  the  emergence  of 
this  blazing  luminary  from  the  Oxford  horizon,  which 
he  had  himself  so  lately  left. 

Of  Mr.  Swinburne's  influence  on  Warren's  imagina- 
tion, on  his  whole  intellectual  character,  there  can  be 
no  question.  Personal  influence  there  was  none  ;  he 
recollected,  dimly,  the  brilliant  boy  at  Eton,  two  years 
his  junior ;  and  once,  in  1877,  I  persuaded  these  two 
men,  of  talents  and  habits  of  mind  so  diverse,  to  meet 
at  dinner  in  my  house  ;  with  that  exception — and 
Warren  was  absolutely  tongue-tied  throughout  the 
eventful  evening — he  never  (I  think)  saw  the  poet 
whose  work  had  so  deeply  ploughed  up  his  prejudices 


Lord  De  Tabley  175 

and  traditions.  But  he  had  been  one  of  the  very  first 
to  read  Atalanta,  and  he  had  tormented  G.  H.  Lewes 
into  a  grudging  permission  to  let  him  write  about  it  in 
the  Fortnightly  Review.  His  article  appeared,  and  was 
one  of  those  which  earUest  called  attention  to  Mr. 
Swinburne's  genius  ;  but  Lewes,  although  Warren's 
criticism  was  signed,  had  toned  down  the  ardour  of  it, 
and  had  introduced  one  or  two  slighting  phrases. 
These  editorial  corrections  poor  Warren  carried  about 
with  him,  like  open  wounds,  for,  it  is  no  exaggeration 
to  say,  thirty  years,  and  to  the  last  could  never  be 
reminded  of  Mr.  Swinburne  without  a  shudder  at  the 
thought  of  what  he  must  think  that  Warren  thought  he 
thought.  Alas  1  at  times  his  life  was  made  a  perfect 
nightmare  to  him  by  reverberated  sensibilities  of  this 
kind. 

The  importance  of  the  stimulus  given  to  Warren  by 
Mr.  Swinburne's  early  publications  was  seen  in  the 
metrical  drama  after  the  antique,  Philoctetes,  printed  in 
1867.  It  was  announced  as  "by  M.A.,"  which  meant 
Master  of  Arts,  a  further  excess  of  anonymity,  but 
which  was  interpreted  as  meaning  Matthew  Arnold,  to 
the  author's  unfeigned  dismay.  This  rumour — instantly 
contradicted,  of  course — gave  a  certain  piquancy  to  the 
book,  and  this  was  the  one  of  all  Warren's  early 
volumes  which  may  be  said  to  have  received  an 
adequate  welcome.  It  was  compared  with  Merope,  and 
its  superiority  to  that  frigid  fiasco  was  patent.  In 
Philoctetes  Warren,  undisturbed  by  the  circumstance 
that  Sophocles. had  taken  the  same  story  for  one  of  the 


176  Critical  Kit-Kats 

most  stately  of  his  tragedies,  undertook  to  develop  the 
character  of  the  wounded  exile  in  his  solitary  cave  in 
Lemnos,  and  under  the  wiles  of  Ulysses.  In  the  poem 
of  Sophocles  no  woman  is  introduced,  but  Warren 
creates  iEgle,  a  girl  of  the  island,  humbly  devoted  to 
Philoctetes.  Instead  of  the  beautiful,  delicate  Neopto- 
lemus  of  Sophocles,  the  modern  poet  makes  the  com- 
panion of  Ulysses  a  rougher  figure,  and  omits  Heracles 
altogether.  This  plot,  indeed,  is  quite  independent  of 
that  of  Sophocles.  He  introduces  a  chorus  of  fisher- 
men, who  chant  unrhymed  odes,  often  of  extreme  beauty, 
in  this  manner : 

Pan  is  a  god  seated  in  natures  cave^ 

Abiding  with  us, 

No  cloudy  ruler  in  the  delicate  air-belts^ 

But  in  the  ripening  slips  and  tangles 

Of  cork-woods,  in  the  bull-rush  pits  where  oxea 

Lie  soaking,  chin-deep  ; 

In  the  mulberry-orchard. 

With  milky  kexes  and  marrowy  hemlocks, 

Among  the  floating  silken  under-darnels. 

He  is  a  god,  this  Pan, 

Content  to  dwell  among  us,  nor  disdains 

The  damp,  hot  wood-smell ; 

He  loves  the  fiakes  pine-boles  sand-brown. 

To  give  any  impression  of  a  tragical  drama  by  brief 
extracts  is  impossible.  But  Warren  put  a  great  deal 
of  himself  into  the  soliloquies  of  the  lame  warrior,  and 
few  who  knew  him  but  will  recognise  a  self-conscious 
portrait  when  Ulysses  tells  his  companion  that 


Lord  De  Tabley  177 

Persuasion,  Pyrrhus,  is  a  delicate  things 
And  very  intricate  the  toil  of  words 
Whereby  to  smonthe  away  the  spiteful  past 
From  a  proud  heart  on  edge  with  long  disease  ,• 
For  round  the  sick  man,  like  a  poison' d  mist^ 
His  wrongs  are  ever  brooding.     He  cannot  shake 
These  insects  of  the  shadow  from  his  brow 
In  the  free  bountiful  air  of  enter  prize. 
Therefore  expect  reproaches  of  this  man 
And  bitter  spurts  O)  aiiger  ;  for  much  pain 
Hath  nothing  healed  his  wound  these  many  years. 

The  publication  of  Philodetes,  however,  marks  a 
period  of  healing  almost  like  that  of  the  Lemnian  hero's 
own  return.  The  shy  and  self-distrusting  poet  was 
conscious  of  a  warm  tide  of  encouragement.  From 
many  sides  greetings  flowed  in  upon  him.  Tennyson, 
though  deprecating  the  composition  of  antique  choral 
dramas  as  not  a  natural  form  of  art,  applauded ;  Robert 
Browning  was  enthusiastic ;  Mr.  Gladstone,  an  old 
family  friend,  was  warm  in  congratulation.  This  was 
the  one  bright  moment  in  Warren's  early  literary  life  ; 
something  like  fame  seemed  to  reach  him  for  a  moment, 
and  his  delicate,  shy  nature  expanded  in  the  glow  of  it. 
It  passed  as  quickly  as  it  came,  and  a  quarter  of  a 
century  was  to  go  by,  and  nearly  the  whole  remaining 
period  of  his  life,  before  he  tasted  popular  praise  again. 

Encouraged  by  this  ephemeral  success  and  applause, 
and  under  the  stress  of  a  violent  and  complicated 
private  emotion,  Warren  wrote  in  1868  another  antique 
drama,  his  Orestes,  ni  my  judgment  the  most  completely 

M 


178  Critical  Kit-Kats 

satisfactory  of  his  works,  and  the  most  original.  It 
was  not,  however,  well  received.  The  classical  re- 
viewers were  stupefied  to  discover  that  the  hero  was 
not  the  celebrated  son  of  Agamemnon,  but  a  wholly 
fictitious  Orestes,  "  prince  of  the  Larissaean  branch  of 
the  Aleuadas."  This  fact  alienated  sympathy  while  it 
puzzled  the  critics,  who  received  with  frigid  caution  a 
play,  the  plot  of  which  seemed  to  lay  a  trap  for  their 
feet.  Why  Warren,  with  characteristic  lack  of  literary 
tact,  chose  the  unhappy  name  of  Orestes  for  his  hero, 
I  know  not ;  when  it  was  too  late,  he  bewailed  his 
imprudence.  But  the  reception  of  this  noble  poem — 
which,  some  day  or  other,  must  be  re-discovered  and 
read — was  one  of  the  tragical  events  in  Warren's  life. 
This  should,  too,  have  been  the  moment  for  him  to 
drop  the  veil,  and  come  forward  in  his  real  person ;  but 
all  he  could  persuade  himself  to  concede  was  a  return 
to  the  old  unmeaning  pseudonymn,  "  William  Lan- 
caster." 

The  neglect  was  trebly  undeserved.  Orestes  was 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  poems  that  English  literature 
produced  between  the  generation  of  Arnold  and  that  of 
Rossetti.  The  plot  is  simple,  dignified,  and  dramatic, 
the  verse  strong  and  vivid,  well-knit,  and  not  of  a  too- 
waxy  sweetness.  There  is  a  scene  near  the  close — 
where  Orestes,  who  has  discovered  that  his  mother, 
Dyseris,  is  dishonoured  in  the  love  of  Simus,  an 
adventurer,  turns  upon  her,  breaking  the  chain  of  filial 
awe,  and  denounces  her  crimes  to  her  face,  going  too 
far,  indeed,  and  accusmg  her,  talsely,  of  a  design  upon 


Lord  De  Tabley  179 

his  own  life — which  is  magnificent,  with  the  stately, 
large  passion  of  Racine.  It  is  unfortunate  that  to 
quote  intelligibly  any  of  this  species  of  poetry  demands 
a  wider  space  than  can  here  be  spared.  But  I  hope 
that  whatever  revival  of  Lord  De  Tabley's  poetry  may 
be  made,  will  without  fail  include  Orestes. 

In  the  next  years  he  essayed,  still  as  William  Lan- 
caster, to  write  novels.  He  made  no  mark,  though,  I 
believe,  a  little  money,  by  A  Screw  Loose,  1868,  and 
Ropes  of  Sand,  1 869.  He  returned  to  his  true  vocation 
in  the  volume  of  poems  entitled  Rehearsals,  1870,  when 
for  the  first  time  a  title-page  carried  the  full  name  John 
Leicester  Warren.  Searching  the  Net  followed  in  1873, 
and  we  may  take  these  two  books  together,  for  they 
were  identical  in  character,  and  they  displayed  the  poet 
at  his  average  level  of  execution.  In  these  dramatic 
monologues,  songs,  odes,  and  sonnets  we  find  a  talent, 
which  in  its  essence  was  exquisite,  struggling  against 
a  variety  of  disadvantages.  Among  these — and  it  is 
necessary  to  mention  them,  for  they  were  always  Lord 
De  Tabley's  persistent  enemies — two  were  peculiarly 
prominent,  want  of  concentration  and  want  of  critical 
taste.  The  importance  of  the  first-mentioned  quality, 
in  his  case,  was  exemplified  by  the  success  of  the 
volume  of  1893,  which  mainly  consisted  of  the  best 
things,  and  nothing  but  the  best,  which  he  had  previ- 
ously published.  The  second  led  him  to  produce  and 
to  print  what  was  not  reprinted  in  1893,  and  to  give  it 
just  as  much  prominence  as  he  gave  his  best  pieces. 
Koihing  else  will  account  for  the  neglect  of  such  things 


i8o  Critical  Kit-Kats 

as  lie  strewn  about  the  pages  of  these  unequal  volumes, 
pictures  like  : 

Where  deep  woods  swoon  with  solitude  divine^ 
I  wait  thee  there,  arm-deep  in  fiowery  twine. 
Where  gleam  flushed  poppies  in  among  grey  tares  ; 
Grape-clusters  mellow  near,  and  tumbled  pears 
Are  brown  in  orchard-grass.     The  fer-^-iwl  calls 
At  eve  across  the  cloven  river-falh. 
Whose  flood  leaves  here  an  island,  there  a  swan. 

Or    this,    from    the    fine    dramatic     fragment    called 
"Medea": 

The  sullen  king  turns  roughly  on  his  heel. 
Whirling  his  regal  mantle  round  his  eyes. 
And  so  departs,  with  slow  steps,  obstinate  ; 
Ah,  but  the  queen,  the  pale  one,  beautiful. 
Prone,  in  the  dust  her  holy  bosom  laid. 
Mingles  her  outspread  hair  with  fallen  leaves^ 
And  sandal-soil  is  on  her  gracious  head. 
Ah,  lamentable  lady,  pitiful  I 

Warren's  next  work  was  a  drama,  on  which  he  was 
working  long,  and  from  which  he  expected  much.  But 
The  Soldier  of  Fortune,  1 876,  proved  the  worst  of  his 
literary  disasters.  It  was  a  vague  German  story  of  the 
sixteenth  century  put  into  blank  verse,  and  cut  into 
five  huge  acts ;  this  "  play  "  extends  to  between  four 
and  five  hundred  pages.  It  is  essentially  undramatic, 
mere  bed-rock,  through  which  run  veins  of  pure  gold  of 
poetry,  but  in  an  impregnable  condition.     The  Soldier 


Lord  De  Tabley  i8i 

of  Fortune  is  full  of  beautiful  lines,  one  of  which,  in 
particular,  has  always  run  in  my  memory — 

On  worm-drilPd  vellums  of  Id-time  revenges, — 

but  it  is  perfectly  hopeless  as  a  piece  of  literature.  He 
told  me  lately — I  know  not  whether  in  pardonable 
exaggeration — that  not  a  single  copy  of  it  was  sold. 
He  was  deeply  irritated  and  wounded,  and  now  began 
that  retirement  from  the  public  which  lasted  obstinately 
for  seventeen  years. 

At  last  his  brother-in-law,  Sir  Baldwyn  Leighton, 
persuaded  him  that  a  new  generation  had  arisen,  to 
whom  he  might  make  a  fresh  appeal.  Others  encour- 
aged this  idea,  and  by  degrees  the  notion  that  a  selection 
of  the  best  things  in  his  old  books,  supplemented  by 
what  he  had  written  during  these  years  of  eclipse, 
might  form  a  volume  which  people  would  read  with 
pleasure.  The  result  was  Poems  Dramatic  and  Lyrical, 
of  1893,  which  still  represents  Lord  De  Tabley  to  the 
majority  of  readers.  This  book  enjoyed  a  genuine  and 
substantial  success,  quite  as  great  as  verse  of  this 
stately  order  could  enjoy.  He  was  encouraged  to  write 
more,  and,  to  our  general  astonishment,  he  was  able, 
in  the  spring  of  1895,  to  produce,  in  identical  form,  a 
second  series  of  the  Poems.  This  was  respectfully 
received,  but  so  enthusiastic  a  welcome  as  greeted 
the  concentrated  selection  of  1893  was  hardly  to  be 
looked  for. 

From  the  new  poems  in  the  volume  of  1893  a  frag- 
ment of  that  entitled  "  Circe  "  may  here  be  quoted  : 


I«z 


Critical  Kit-Kats 


Reared  across  a  looniy 
Hung  a  fair  web  of  tapestry  half  done ^ 
Crowding  with  folds  and  fancies  half  the  room: 
Men  eyed  as  gods,  and  damsels  still  as  stone 
Pressing  their  brows  alone^ 
In  amethystine  robes, 

Or  reaching  at  the  polished  orchard-globes. 
Or  rubbing  parted  love-lips  on  their  rind. 
While  the  wind 

Sows  with  sere  apple-leaves  their  breast  and  hairg 
And  all  the  margin  there 
Was  arabesqued  and  bordered  intricate 
With  hairy  spider-things 
That  catch  and  clamber. 
And  salamander  in  his  dripping-cave, 
Satanic  ebon-amber  ; 

Blind-worm,  and  asp,  and  eft  of  cumbrous  gait. 
And  toads  who  love  rank  grasses  near  a  grave, 
And  the  great  goblin  moth,  who  bears 
Between  his  wings  the  ruined  eyes  of  death; 
And  the  enamelled  sails 

Of  butterfies  who  watch  the  morning^ s  breath. 
And  many  an  emerald  lizard  with  quick  ears. 
Asleep  in  rocky  dales  ; 
And  for  an  outer  fringe  embroidered  sm.all, 
A  ring  of  many  locusts,  horny-coaied, 
A  round  of  chirping  tree-frogs  merry-throated. 
And  sly,  fat  fishes  sailing,  watching  all. 

This  sumptuous  picture,  a  sort  of  Shield  of  Achilles  in 
a  fragment  of  an  epic,  is  very  strongly  composed. 

If  we  examine  the  central  and  typical  qualities  oi 


Lord  De  Tabley  183 

Lord  De  Tabley  as  a  poet,  we  are  struck  first  by  the 
brocaded  magnificence  of  his  style.  This  steadily  grew 
with  his  growth,  and  was  an  element  of  real  originality. 
It  is  to  be  distinguished  from  anything  like  tinsel  or 
flash  in  what  he  wrote ;  it  was  a  genuine  thing,  fostered, 
in  later  years,  by  a  very  close  study  of  the  diction  of 
Milton,  which  gave  him  more  and  more  delight  as  he 
gi-ew  older.  He  liked  to  wrap  his  thought  in  cloth  of 
gold,  to  select  from  the  immense  repertory  of  his 
memory  the  most  gorgeously  sonorous  noun,  the  most 
imperial  adjective,  at  his  command.  In  all  this  he  was 
consciously  out  of  sympathy  with  the  men  of  our  own 
time,  who  prefer  the  rougher,  directer  verbiage,  or  else 
a  studied  simplicity.  The  poetry  of  Lord  De  Tabley 
was  not  simple ;  when  he  tried  to  make  it  homely,  he 
utterly  failed.  His  efforts  at  humour,  at  naive  pathos, 
were  generally  unfortunate.  But,  when  his  melan- 
choly, dignified  Muse  stalked  across  the  stage  wrapped 
in  heavy  robes,  stiff  with  threads  of  gold,  she  rose  to 
her  full  stature  and  asserted  her  personal  dignity  with 
success.  It  was  with  the  gorgeous  writers  of  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  that  Lord  De  Tabley 
found  himself  in  fullest  sympathy,  with  Milton  and 
Crashaw  in  verse,  with  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  in  prose.  So,  among  poets  of  the  present 
century,  his  sympathies  were  all  with  Keats  and 
Browning,  while  for  Wordsworth  and  Matthew  Arnold 
he  had  a  positive  indifference  ;  he  liked  a  weighty  form 
and  full  colour  in  style,  and  it  was  in  the  production  of 
such  a  manner  that  he  excelled. 


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Another  central  quality  which  distinguishes  him  as  a 
poet  is  his  extremely  minute  and  accurate  observation 
of  natural  phenomena.  Many  poets  of  a  high  order 
recognise  no  flower  but  the  rose,  and  no  bird  but  the 
nightingale,  and  are  fortunate  if  the  whale  is  not  their 
only  fish.  But  among  his  exceptional  accomplishments, 
Lord  De  Tabley  counted  an  exact  knowledge  of  several 
branches  of  science.  In  botany,  in  particular,  and  in 
ornithology,  his  reputation  at  certain  points  was  Euro- 
pean ;  I  believe  I  am  right,  for  instance,  in  saying  that 
he  was  the  first  living  authority  on  the  Brambles.  His 
eye,  trained  in  many  branches  of  observation,  served 
him  admirably  as  a  poet ;  for  the  general  reader,  it 
served  him,  perhaps,  too  well,  bewildering  the  untaught 
brain  with  the  frequency  and  the  exactitude  of  his 
images  drawn  from  the  visible  world  of  earth  and  sky. 
In  these  he  is  not  less  accurate  than  Tenn3^son,  and 
he  sometimes  pushes  his  note  of  nature  still  further 
into  elaborate  portraitures  of  country  life  than  Tenny- 
son, with  greater  tact,  ever  cared  to  do. 

If  I  am  asked  to  say,  at  once,  wherein  I  consider 
that  the  strength  and  weakness  alike  of  this  poet  con- 
sisted, I  reply  in  his  treatment  of  detail.  His  theory 
of  execution  was  one  in  which  detail  took  a  paramount 
place.  Jewels  five  words  long  were  what  he  delighted 
in  and  desired  to  produce,  and  to  secure  them  he  sacri- 
ficed the  general  rotundity  and  perfection  of  his  work. 
In  this,  as  in  certain  other  points,  he  resembled  the 
great  Jacobean  poets.  Like  Cyril  Tourneur,  or  like 
Giles  Fletcher,  to  mention  two  very  dissimilar  writers, 


Lord  De  Tabley  185 

with  each  of  whom  he  presented  certain  analogies,  he 
was  so  fascinated  with  a  single  line  that  was 
specially  exquisite  or  thrilling,  a  single  image  which 
was  novel  and  picturesque,  that  he  was  content  to 
leave  it  set  in  a  ragged  passage  which  was  almost 
wholly  without  charm.  He  even  seemed,  as  they  often 
seem,  to  prefer  to  wear  his  rubies  and  opals  on  a  dingy 
texture  that  they  might  beam  from  it  more  radiantly. 
The  splendid  single  line  is  out  of  fashion  now — fifty 
years  ago  it  was  absolutely  dominant  in  English  poetry 
— and  Lord  De  Tabley's  resolute  cultivation  of  it  gave 
his  verse  an  old-fashioned  air.  We  are  just  now  all  in 
favour  of  a  poetry  in  which  the  force  and  beauty  are 
equally  distributed  throughout,  and  in  which  execution, 
not  of  a  Hne  or  of  a  stan|a,  but  of  a  complete  poem,  is 
aimed  at.  But  this  is  really  a  fashion  rather  than 
a  law. 


In  some  dedicatory  verses  to  myself,  which  Lord 
De  Tabley  printed  in  1893,  he  said  that  **  twent}'-  years 
and  more  "  were  then  "  ended  "  since  the  beginning  of 
our  friendship.  His  memory  slightly  stretched  the 
period,  but  it  was  in  the  winter  of  1875  that  I  met 
him  first.  I  have  no  recollection  of  the  event ;  one 
week  I  had  never  heard  of  him,  the  next  week  he  had 
become  part  of  my  existence.  Long  afterwards  he 
told  me  that,  crossing  Hj'de  Park  one  Sunday  morn- 
ing, after  a  painful  interview  with  an  old  companion, 
he  had  observed  to  himself  that  his  acquaintances  had 


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fallen  below  the  number  which  he  could  count  on  the 
fingers  of  his  two  hands ;  his  principle  was  that  one 
should  not  be  acquainted  with  fewer  than  ten  people  in 
all,  and  so  he  determined  to  know  Mr.  Austin  Dobson  and 
myself,  "  to  add  a  little  new  blood,"  as  he  put  it.  For 
my  part,  I  was  too  raw  and  inexperienced  to  appreciate 
the  distinction  of  his  choice,  but  not  too  dull  to  value 
the  soft  goings  and  comings  of  this  moth-like  man,  so 
hushed  and  faded,  like  a  dehcate  withered  leaf,  so 
mysterious,  so  profoundly  learned,  so  acutely  sensitive 
that  an  inflection  in  the  voice  seemed  to  chill  him  like 
a  cold  wind,  so  refined  that  with  an  ardent  thought  the 
complexion  of  his  intellect  seemed  to  flush  like  the 
cheek  of  a  girl. 

He  was  forty  at  that  time,  but  looked  older.  Those 
who  have  seen  him  in  these  last  years  recall  a  finer 
presence,  a  more  "  striking  "  personality.  Of  late  he 
carried  upon  his  bending  shoulders  a  veritable  iete  de 
roi  en  exit;  he  reminded  us,  towards  the  end,  of  one 
of  the  fallen  brethren  of  Hyperion.  But  in  1875,  in 
his  unobtrusive  dress,  with  his  timid,  fluttering  manner, 
there  was  nothing  at  all  impressive  in  the  outer  guise 
of  him.  He  seemed  to  melt  into  the  twilight  of  a 
corner,  to  succeed,  as  far  as  a  mortal  can,  in  being 
invisible.  This  evasive  ghost,  in  a  loose  snufl"-coloured 
coat,  would  always  be  the  first  person  in  the  room  to 
be  overlooked  by  a  superficial  observer.  It  was  in  a 
iete-d-tete  across  the  corner  of  the  mahogany,  under  a 
lamplight  that  emphasised  the  noble  modelling  of  the 
forehead,  and  lighted  up  the  pale  azure  eyes,  that  a 


Lord  De  Tabley  187 

companion  saw  what  manner  of  man  he  was  dealing 
with,  and  half-divined,  perhaps,  the  beauty  and  wisdom 
of  this  unique  and  astonishing  mind.  It  was  an 
education  to  be  permitted  to  Hsten  to  him  then,  to 
receive  his  sHght  and  intermittent  confidences,  to  pour 
out,  with  the  inconsiderate  egotism  of  youth,  one's  own 
hopes  and  failures,  to  feel  this  infinitely  refined  and 
sensitive  spirit  benignantly  concentrated  on  one's 
prentice  efforts,  which  seemed  to  grow  a  little  riper 
and  more  dignified  by  the  mere  benediction  of  that 
smile.  His  intellect,  in  my  opinion,  was  a  singularly 
healthy  one,  and,  therefore,  in  its  almost  preternatural 
quickness  and  manj^-sidedness,  calculated  to  help  and 
stimulate  the  minds  of  others.  It  did  not  guide  or 
command,  it  simply  radiated  light  around  the  steps  of 
a  friend.  The  radiance  was  sometimes  faint,  but  it 
was  exquisite,  and  it  seemed  omnipresent. 

Yet  it  is  unquestionable  that  to  most  of  those  who 
saw  Lord  De  Tabley  casually,  his  manner  gave  the 
impression  more  of  hypochondria  than  of  health. 
That  excessive  sensitiveness  of  his,  which  shrank 
from  the  slightest  impact  of  what  was,  or  what  even 
faintly  seemed  to  be,  unsympathetic,  could  but  produce 
on  the  superficial  observer  an  idea  of  want  of  self- 
command.  To  pretend  that  the  equilibrium  of  his 
spirit  was  not  disturbed  would  be  idle ;  the  turmoil 
of  his  nerves  was  written  on  those  fierce  and  timid 
eyes  of  his.  But  it  is  only  right  now  to  say,  and  to 
say  with  insistence,  that  it  was  no  indulgence  of  eccen- 
tricity, no  wilful  melancholy,  that  made  him  so  quiver- 


1 88  Critical  Kit-Kats 

ing  and  shrinking  a  soul.  He  had  suffered  from 
troubles  such  as  now  may  well  be  buried  in  his  grave, 
sorrows  that  beset  him  from  his  youth  up,  disappoint- 
ments and  disillusions  that  dogged  him  to  the  very  close 
of  his  career,  and  made  death  itself  almost  welcome 
to  him,  although  he  loved  life  so  well.  He  was  one 
who,  Hke  Gray,  "never  spoke  out,"  and  only  those 
who  knew  him  best  could  divine  what  the  foxes  were 
that  gnawed  the  breast  under  the  cloak.  Very  few 
human  beings  are  pursued  from  the  beginning  of  life 
to  its  close  with  so  many  distracting  griefs  and  per- 
plexities, such  a  combination  of  misfortunes  and  wear- 
ing annoyances,  as  this  gentle-hearted  poet,  who  grew, 
at  last,  so  harried  by  the  implacable  ingenuity  of  his 
destiny  that  a  movement  or  a  word  would  awaken  his 
fatalistic  alarm. 

The  knowledge  of  this  should  now  account  for  a 
good  deal  that  puzzled  and  even  grieved  his  friends. 
Moral  and  physical  suffering  had  rendered  the  epidermis 
of  his  character  so  excessively  thin  that  the  merest 
trifle  pained  him  ;  he  was  like  those  unfortunate  persons 
who  are  born  without  a  scarf-skin,  on  whom  the  pres- 
sure of  a  twig  or  the  grip  of  a  hand  brings  blood. 
This  sensitiveness  was  pitiable,  and  the  results  of  it 
even  a  little  blameworthy,  since,  if  they  entailed 
wretchedness  on  himself,  they  caused  needless  pain  to 
those  who  truly  loved  him.  I  doubt  if  any  friend, 
however  tactful  in  self-abnegation,  got  through  many 
years  of  Lord  De  Tabley's  intimacy  without  an  electric 
storm.     His  imagination  aided  his  ingenuity  in  self- 


Lord  De  Tabley  189 

torture,  and  conjured  up  monsters  of  malignity,  spectres 
that  strode  across  the  path  of  friendship  and  rendered 
it  impassable.  But  his  tempestuous  heat  was  not 
greater  than  his  placability,  and  those  who  had  not 
patience  to  wait  the  return  of  his  kinder  feelings  can 
scarcely  have  been  worthy  of  them. 

He  lived  for  friendship — poetry  and  his  friends  were 
the  two  lode-stars  of  his  life.  Yet  he  cultivated  his 
intimates  oddly.  He  sometimes  reminded  me  of  a  bird- 
fancier  with  all  his  pets  in  separate  cages  ;  he  attended 
to  each  of  them  in  turn,  but  he  did  not  choose  that  they 
should  mix  in  a  general  social  aviary.  He  was  not  un- 
willing to  meet  the  acquaintances  of  his  friends,  but  he 
did  not  care  to  bring  his  intimates  much  into  contact 
with  one  another.  Probably  the  number  of  these  last 
was  greater  than  any  one  of  them  was  accustomed  to 
realise.  At  the  head  of  them  all,  I  think,  stood  Sir 
Mountstuart  Grant  DufF;  not  far  behind,  Sir  A.  W. 
Franks.  Besides  these  companions  of  his  youth,  he 
cultivated  among  the  friends  of  his  middle  life.  Sir  Henry 
Howorth,  Mr.  W.  T.  Thiselton-Dyer,  and  others,  each 
linked  with  him  by  a  combination  of  tastes — anti- 
quarianism,  numismatics,  zoology,  horticulture,  some 
pursuit  which  made  the  woof  of  a'  texture  in  which 
personal  sympathy  was  the  warp.  But  he  lived  among 
the  dead,  and  to  these  his  attitude  was  much  the  same 
as  that  of  a  priest  in  the  shrine  of  his  vanished  deities. 
To  him  the  unseen  faces  were  often  more  real  than  the 
living  ones. 

The  side  on  which  I  was  most  capable  ot  appreciating 


190  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Lord  de  Tabley's  gifts  as  a  collector  was  the  biblio- 
graphical. If  I  am  anything  of  a  connoisseur  in  this 
direction,  I  owe  it  to  his  training.  His  zeal  in  the 
amassing  of  early  editions  of  the  English  poets  was 
extreme  ;  he  was  one  of  those  who  think  nothing  of 
hanging  about  a  book-shop  at  six  in  the  morning,  waiting 
for  the  shutters  to  be  taken  down.  But  his  zeal  was 
eminently  according  to  knowledge.  He  valued  his  first 
edition  for  the  text's  sake,  not  for  the  bare  fact  of  rarity. 
Every  book  he  bought  he  read,  and  with  a  critical  gusto. 
A  little  anecdote  may  illustrate  his  spirit  as  a  collector. 
In  1877  he  secured,  by  a  happy  accident,  a  copy  of 
Milton's  Poems  of  1645,  a  book  which  he  had  never  met 
with  before.  Too  eager  to  wait  for  the  post,  he  sent  a 
messenger  round  to  my  house  with  a  note  to  announce 
not  merely  the  joyful  fact,  but — this  is  the  interesting 
point — a  discovery  he  had  made  in  the  volume,  nfmely, 
that  the  line  in  the  "  Nativity  Ode,"  which  in  all  later 
editions  has  run, 

OrVd  in  a  rainbow,  and  like  glories  wearing^ 

originally  stood, 

The  enamelPa  arras  of  the  rainbow  wearing^ 

"  which,"  as  he  said,  **  is  a  grand  mouthful  of  sound, 
and  ever  so  much  better  than  the  weak  '  like  glories.' " 
I  shall  not  forget,  when  dining  alone  with  him  once 
at  Onslow  Square,  noticing  that  at  the  beginning  of  the 
meal  he  was  strangely  distraught.  At  length,  the  post 
came,  and  Warren  (as  he   then  was)  tore    open  one 


Lord  De  Tabley  191 

envelope  wildly ;  he  read  the  first  words,  and  sank  back 
faint  in  his  chair,  hiding  his  eyes  with  his  hands.  I  was 
convinced  that  some  terrible  calamity  had  happened  to 
him,  but  it  was  only  that  he  had  secured  a  first  edition  of 
Shelley's  Alastor  at  a  country  auction,  and — la  jote 
faisait  peur!  For  some  of  his  little,  rare  seventeenth- 
century  volumes,  he  had  an  almost  petulant  affection. 
He  has  celebrated  in  beautiful  verse  his  copy  of  Suck- 
ling's Fragmenta  Aurea  ;  and  perhaps  I  may  be  allowed 
to  tell  one  more  bibliomaniac  story.  On  a  certain  occa- 
sion when  I  was  at  his  house,  Robert  Browning  and 
Frederick  Locker  being  the  other  guests,  Warren  had 
^  put  on  the  table  his  latest  prize,  a  copy  of  Sir  William 
Davenant's  Madagascar  of  1638.  Browning  presently 
got  hold  of  the  little  book,  and  began  reading  passages 
aloud,  making  fun  of  the  poetry  (which,  indeed,  is  pretty 
bad)  f^ith  "Listen,  now,  to  this,"  and  "Here's  a  fine 
conceit."  Warren  bore  it  for  a  little  while,  and  then  he 
very  gently  took  the  volume  out  of  Browning's  hands, 
and  hid  it  away.  "  Oh  ! "  he  explained  to  me  after- 
wards, "  I  could  not  allow  him  to  patronise  Davenant." 
A  particular  favourite  with  him  was  Quarles,  as  com- 
bining the  metaphysical  poet  with  the  emblematist.  He 
had  a  curious  theory  that  the  influence,  not  only  of 
Quarles,  but  of  Alciati,  could  be  traced  in  the  designs 
of  Blake,  another  special  object  of  his  study.  Before 
I  leave  bibliography  I  am  tempted  to  quote  a  passage 
from  one  of  De  Tabley's  delightful  letters,  now  nearly 
twenty  years  old  : 

"  I  have  been  cheered  up  by  buying  to-day  a  copy  of 


192  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Henry  Lawes*  Ayres  for  the  Theorbo;  or,  Bas  Vtol, 
1653,  with  some  Herrick  and  Lovelace  pieces  set.  Also 
a  Spenser  of  16 10,  the  first  collected  Folio,  with  nice 
little  plates  to  the  Shepherd's  Calendar — one  each  month. 
I  must  tell  you,  for  very  idiocy — I  had  the  most  vivid 
dream  last  night  that  you  and  I  were  cardinals,  turning 
over  books  in  the  Vatican  Library.  I  remember  the 
look  of  my  own  red  stockings.  We  were  both  in  car- 
dinal red  from  top  to  toe.  I  felt  quite  pleased  to  be  so 
smart,  but  your  robes  seemed  better  made.  How  infi- 
nitely absurd !  But  so  vivid.  A  certain  room  I  re- 
membered in  the  Vatican  came  back  fresh,  and  the  exact 
dress  of  the  old  creatures  I  saw  at  the  Council  (in 
1869)." 

Bibliography  and  the  ardour  of  the  collector  led 
Warren  by  degrees  into  a  department  where  he  was 
destined  to  exercise  a  considerable  influence.  His  love 
of  books  extended  to  a  study  of  those  marks  of  owner- 
ship which  are  known  as  ex-Iibrts,  and  in  1880  he  pub- 
lished A  Guide  to  the  Study  of  Book-plates^  a  handsomely 
illustrated  volume  which  has  been  the  pioneer  of  many 
interesting  works,  and  of  a  whole  society  of  students 
and  annotators.  He  was  led  to  the  historical  study  of 
the  book-plate  by  his  love  of  heraldry,  which  was  to 
be  traced,  too,  in  more  than  one  passage  of  his  poetry. 
I  cannot  recollect  that  his  enthusiasm  for  books  extended 
to  bindings.  His  own  library,  of  which  it  was  his  inten- 
tion to  prepare  a  privately  printed  catalogue — a  project 
which  his  premature  death  has  frustrated — was  not 
conspicuous  bibliopegically.    He  belonged  to  the  class  of 


Lord  De  Tablcy  193 

bibliophiles  whose  books  lie  strewn  over  sofas  and  arm- 
chairs, instead  of  being  ranged  in  cases  like  jewels.  His 
servant,  I  recollect  his  telling  me,  became  so  incensed 
with  his  books  that  he  grew  to  regard  them  as  personal 
enemies,  and  when,  about  1879,  Warren  proposed  to 
move  from  Onslow  Square,  this  man  snorted  with  the 
joy  of  battle,  and  said,  "At  last  I'll  be  even  with  them 
dummed  books." 

He  was  writing  poetry  to  the  last,  and  I  think,  from 
what  he  very  lately  wrote  to  me,  that  a  volume  of  MS. 
verses  will  be  found  almost  ready  for  the  press.  It 
was  a  great  pleasure  to  him  to  know  that  many  of  his 
fellow-craftsmen  were  now  eager  to  receive  his  work. 
Mr.  Austin  Dobson  had  always  been  an  admirer,  and 
one  of  the  latest  tributes  which  cheered  De  Tabley 
was  a  copy  of  verses  from  this  friend  of  twenty  years, 
which  I  have  the  privilege  of  printing  here  for  the  first 
time : 

Still  may  the  Muses  foster  thee,  O  Frievd^ 

Who,  while  the  vacant  quidnuncs  stand  at  gazSy 
Wondering  what  Prophet  next  the  Fates  will  send^ 

Still  tread^st  the  ancient  ways  ; 
Still  climi'st  the  clear-cold  altitudes  of  Song^ 

Or,  lingering  "  by  the  shore  of  old  Romance^ 
Heed' St  not  the  vogue,  how  little  or  how  long^ 

Of  marvels  made  in  France. 
Still  to  the  summits  may  thy  face  be  set ; 

And  long  may  we,  that  heard  thy  morning  rhyme^ 
Hang  on  thy  mid-day  music,  nor  forget 
In  the  hushed  even-time  I 


194  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Mr.  Theodore  Watts,  too — whose  touching  and  pic- 
turesque anecdotes  in  the  Athenceum  of  November  30 
are  of  real  value  in  forming  an  impression  of  Lord 
De  Tabley's  character — was  a  constant  and  judicious 
encourager  of  his  art. 

In  those  three  latest  years  of  his  partial  reappearance 
in  the  world  of  letters,  Lord  De  Tabley  has  rejoiced 
many  of  his  old  friends  by  a  renewal  of  the  early 
delightful  relations.  He  has  formed  new  friendships, 
too,  among  those  who  will  remember  his  noble  head 
and  gentle,  stately  manners  when  we  older  ones  have 
joined  him.  He  appreciated  the  company  of  several 
members  of  the  new  school  of  poets,  and  especially 
that  of  Mr.  William  Watson,  Mr.  John  Davidson,  and 
Mr.  Arthur  Christopher  Bertson.  The  last  named,  I 
think,  in  particular,  enjoyed  a  greater  intimacy  with 
him  than  any  other  man  who  is  now  less  than  thirty- 
five  years  of  age.  There  has  been  so  much  of  the 
elder  generation,  then,  in  this  little  memoir,  that  I 
prefer  to  close  with  a  few  words  written  to  me  by  this 
latest  friend  when  the  death  was  announced — words 
which  Mr.  Benson  kindly  permits  me  to  print : 

"  Lord  de  Tabley  always  struck  me  as  being  a 
curious  instance  of  the  irony  of  destiny — a  man  with 
so  many  sources  of  pleasure  and  influence  open  to  him 
■ — his  love  of  literature,  his  mastery  of  style,  his 
conversational  charm,  his  social  position,  his  affectionate 
nature — yet  bearing  always  about  with  him  a  curious 
attitude  of  resignation  and  disappointment,  as  though 
life  were,  on  the  whole,  a  sad  business,  and,  for  the 


Lord  De  Tabley  195 

sake  of  courtesy  and  decency,  the  less  said  about  it  the 
better,  I  must  repeat  the  word  '  courtesy/  for,  like  a 
subtle  fragrance,  it  interpenetrated  all  he  did  or  said. 
It  seemed  the  natural  aroma  of  an  exquisitely  sensitive, 
delicate,  and  considerate  spirit.  There  was  something 
archaic,  almost,  one  might  say,  hierarchical,  about  his 
head,  with  its  long,  rippled,  grey  hair,  the  transparent 
pallor  of  complexion,  the  piercing  eye.  He  dressed 
with  the  same  severity,  and,  though  I  never  heard  him 
speak  of  religion,  there  was  about  him  a  certain  monastic 
stateliness  of  air  which  one  sees  most  frequently  in 
those  who  combine  worldly  position  with  the  possession 
of  a  tranquillising  faith.  He  contrived  to  inspire 
affection  to  a  singular  extent.  l'v,ihaps  there  was  a 
certain  pathos  about  his  life  and  the  strange  contradic- 
tions it  contained,  but  I  think  there  was  also  in  him  a 
deep  need  of  affection,  and,  in  spite  of  his  determined 
effort  after  courage  and  calm,  an  intimate  despair  of 
gaining  the  encouragement  of  others." 

This  is  beautifully  said,  I  think,  and  delicately  felt, 
yet,  like  all  our  attempts  to  analyse  the  fugitive  charm 
of  this  extraordinary  being,  it  leaves  the  memory  un- 
satisfied. 


TORU    DUTT 


Toru  Dutt 

If  Toru  Dutt  were  alive,  she  would  still  (in  1882)  be 
younger  than  any  recognised  European  writer,  and 
yet  her  fame,  which  is  already  considerable,  has  been 
entirely  posthumous.  Within  the  brief  space  of  four 
years  which  now  divides  us  from  the  date  of  her 
decease,  her  genius  has  been  revealed  to  the  world 
under  many  phases,  and  has  been  recognised  in 
France  and  England.  Her  name,  at  least,  is  no 
longer  unfamiliar  in  the  ear  of  any  well-read  man  or 
woman.  But  at  the  hour  of  her  death  she  had  pub- 
lished but  one  book,  and  that  book  had  found  but  two 
reviewers  in  Europe.  One  of  these,  M.  Andre  Theuriet, 
the  well-known  poet  and  novelist,  gave  the  Sheaf 
gleaned  in  French  Fields  adequate  praise  in  the  Revue 
des  Deux  Mondes;  but  the  other,  the  writer  of  the 
present  notice,  has  a  melancholy  satisfaction  in  having 
been  a  little  earlier  still  in  sounding  the  only  note  of 
welcome  which  reached  the  dying  poetess  from  England. 
It  was  while  Professor  W.  Minto  was  editor  of  the 
Examiner^  that  one  day  in  August,  1876,  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  dead  season  for  books,  I  happened  to  be 
in  the  office  of  that  newspaper,  and  was  upbraiding'  the 
whole  body  of  publishers  for  issuing  no  books  worth 


200  Critical  Kit-Kats 

reviewing.  At  that  moment  the  postman  brought  in  a 
thin  and  sallow  packet  with  a  wonderful  Indian  post- 
mark on  it,  and  containing  a  most  unattractive  orange 
pamphlet  of  verse,  printed  at  Bhowanipore,  and  entitled 
**A  Sheaf  gleaned  in  French  Fields,  by  Torn  Dutt."  This 
shabby  little  book  of  some  two  hundred  pages,  without 
preface  or  introduction,  seemed  specially  destined  by 
its  particular  providence  to  find  its  way  hastily  into 
the  waste-paper  basket.  I  remember  that  Mr.  Minto 
thrust  it  into  my  unwilling  hands,  and  said  "  There !  see 
whether  you  can't  make  something  of  that."  A  hope- 
less volume  it  seemed,  with  its  queer  type,  published 
at  Bhowanipore,  printed  at  the  Saptahiksambad  Press  ! 
But  when  at  last  I  took  it  out  of  my  pocket,  what  was 
my  surprise  and  almost  rapture  to  open  at  such  verse 
as  this : 

Still  barred  thy  doors  I     The  far-east  glotos^ 

The  morning  wind  blows  fresh  andjree. 
Should  not  the  hour  that  wakes  the  rose 
Awaken  also  thee  ? 

All  look  for  thee.  Love,  Light,  and  Song—' 

Light  in  the  sky  deep  red  above, 
Song,  in  the  lark  of  pinions  strong, 

And  in  my  heart,  true  Love, 

Apart  we  miss  our  nature^ s  goal. 

Why  strive  to  cheat  our  destinies  ? 
Was  not  my  love  made  for  thy  soul? 

Thy  beauty  for  mine  eyes? 


Toru  Dutt  20 1 


No  longer  sleep. 

Oh,  listen  now  ! 
I  wait  and  weep. 

But  where  art  thou  I 

When  poetry  is  as  good  as  this  it  does  not  much 
matter  whether  Rouveyre  prints  it  upon  Whatman 
paper,  or  whether  it  steals  to  Hght  in  blurred  type,  from 
some  press  in  Bhowanipore. 

Toru  Dutt  was  the  youngest  of  the  three  children  of 
a  high-caste  Hindu  couple  in  Bengal.  Her  father, 
who  survived  them  all,  the  Baboo  Govin  Chunder  Dutt, 
was  himself  distinguished  among  his  countrymen  for 
the  width  of  his  views  and  the  vigour  of  his  intelligence. 
His  only  son,  Abju,  died  in  1865,  ^^  the  age  of  fourteen, 
and  left  his  two  younger  sisters  to  console  their  parents. 
Aru,  the  elder  daughter,  born  in  1854,  was  eighteen 
months  senior  to  Toru,  the  subject  of  this  memoir, 
who  was  born  in  Calcutta  on  the  4th  of  March,  1856. 
With  the  exception  of  one  year's  visit  to  Bombay, 
the  childhood  of  these  girls  was  spent  in  Calcutta,  at 
their  father's  garden-house.  In  a  poem  I  printed  for 
the  first  time,  Toru  refers  to  the  scene  of  her  earliest 
memories,  the  circling  wilderness  of  foliage,  the  shining 
tank  with  the  round  leaves  of  the  lilies,  the  murmuring 
dusk  under  the  vast  branches  of  the  central  casuarina- 
tree.  Here,  in  a  mystical  retirement  more  irksonfe  to 
an  European  in  fancy  than  to  an  Oriental  in  reality, 
the  brain  of  this  wonderful  child  was  moulded.  She 
was  pure  Hindu,  full  of  the  typical  qualities  of  her 


202  Critical  Kit-Kats 

race  and  blood,  and  preserving  to  the  last  her  apprecia- 
tion of  the  poetic  side  of  her  ancient  religion,  though 
faith  itself  in  Vishnu  and  Siva  had  been  cast  aside 
with  childish  things  and  been  replaced  by  a  purer  faith. 
Her  mother  fed  her  imagination  with  the  old  songs  and 
legends  of  their  people,  stories  which  it  was  the  last 
labour  of  her  hfe  to  weave  into  English  verse ;  but  it 
would  seem  that  the  marvellous  faculties  of  Toru's 
mind  still  slumbered,  when,  in  her  thirteenth  year,  her 
father  decided  to  take  his  daughters  to  Europe  to  learn 
English  and  French.  To  the  end  of  her  days  Toru 
was  a  better  French  than  English  scholar.  She  loved 
France  best,  she  knew  its  literature  best,  she  wrote  its 
language  with  more  perfect  elegance.  The  Dutts 
arrived  in  Europe  at  the  close  of  1869,  and  the  girls 
went  to  school,  for  the  first  and  last  time,  at  a  French 
pension.  They  did  not  remain  there  very  many 
months ;  their  father  took  them  to  Italy  and  England 
with  him,  and  finally  they  attended  for  a  short  time, 
but  with  great  zeal  and  application,  the  lectures  for 
women  at  Cambridge.  In  November,  1873,  they  went 
back  again  to  Bengal,  and  the  four  remaining  years  ol 
Toru's  life  were  spent  in  the  old  garden-house  at 
Calcutta,  in  a  feverish  dream  of  intellectual  effort  and 
imaginative  production.  When  we  consider  what  she 
achieved  in  these  forty-five  months  of  seclusion,  it  is 
impossible  to  wonder  that  the  frail  and  hectic  body 
succumbed  under  so  excessive  a  strain. 

She    brought   with    her    from    Europe   a   store  of 
knowledge  that  would  have  sufficed  to  make  an  English 


Toru  Dutt  203 


or  French  girl  seem  learned,  but  which  in  her  case  was 
simply  miraculous.  Immediately  on  her  return  she 
began  to  study  Sanskrit  with  the  same  intense  applica- 
tion which  she  gave  to  all  her  work,  and  mastering  the 
language  with  extraordinary  swiftness,  she  plunged  into 
its  mysterious  literature.  But  she  was  born  to  write, 
and  despairing  of  an  audience  in  her  own  language, 
she  began  to  adopt  ours  as  a  medium  for  her  thought. 
Her  first  essay,  published  when  she  was  eighteen, 
was  a  monograph  in  the  Bengal  Magazine,  on  Leconte 
de  Lisle,  a  writer  with  whom  she  had  a  sympathy 
which  is  very  easy  to  comprehend.  The  austere  poet 
of  La  Mort  de  Valmiki  was,  obviously,  a  figure  to 
whom  the  poet  of  Sindhii  must  needs  be  attracted  on 
approaching  European  literature.  This  study,  which  was 
illustrated  by  translations  into  English  verse,  was  fol- 
lowed by  another  on  Josephin  Soulary,  in  whom  she  saw 
more  than  her  maturer  judgment  might  have  justified. 

There  is  something  very  interesting  and  now,  alas ! 
still  more  pathetic  in  these  sturdy  and  workmanhke 
essays  in  unaided  criticism.  Still  more  solitary  her 
work  became,  in  July,  1874,  when  her  only  sister, 
Aru,  died,  at  the  age  of  twenty.  She  seems  to  have 
been  no  less  amiable  than  her  sister,  and  if  gifted  with 
less  originality  and  a  less  forcible  ambition,  to  have 
been  finely  accomplished.  Both  sisters  were  well- 
trained  musicians,  with  full  contralto  voices,  and  Aru  had 
a  faculty  for  design  which  promised  well.  The  romance 
o^  Mile.  D'Atvcj-s  was  originally  projected  for  Aru  to 
illusLraic,  but  no  page  of  this  book  did  Aru  ever  see. 


204  Critical  Kit-Kats 

In  1876,  as  we  have  seen,  appeared  that  obscure 
first  volume  at  Ehowanipore.  The  Sheaf  gleaned  in 
French  Fields  is  certainly  the  most  imperfect  of  Toru's 
v^ritings,  but  it  is  not  the  least  interesting.  It  is  a 
wonderful  mixture  of  strength  and  weakness,  of  genius 
overriding  great  obsta'cles  and  of  talent  succumbing  to 
ignorance  and  inexperience.  That  it  should  have  been 
performed  at  all  is  so  extraordinary  that  we  forget  to 
be  surprised  at  its  inequality.  The  English  verse  is 
sometimes  exquisite ;  at  other  times  the  rules  of  our 
prosody  are  absolutely  ignored,  and  it  is  obvious  that 
the  Hindu  poetess  was  chanting  to  herself  a  music 
that  is  discord  in  an  English  ear.  The  notes  are  no  less 
curious,  and  to  a  stranger  no  less  bewildering.  Nothing 
could  be  more  na'ive  than  the  writer's  ignorance  at  some 
points,  or  more  startling  than  her  learning  at  others. 

On  the  whole,  the  attainment  of  the  book  was 
simply  astounding.  It  consisted  of  a  selection  of 
translations  from  nearly  one  hundred  French  poets, 
chosen  by  the  poetess  herself  on  a  principle  of  her  own 
which  gradually  dawned  upon  the  careful  reader.  She  es- 
chewed the  Classicist  writers  as  though  they  had  never 
existed.  For  her  Andrd  Chenier  was  the  next  name 
in  chronological  order  after  Du  Bartas.  Occasionally 
she  showed  a  profundity  of  research  that  would  have 
done  no  discredit  to  Mr.  Saintsbury  or  le  dotix  Asselli- 
neau.  She  was  ready  to  pronounce  an  opinion  on 
Napol  le  Pyrenean  or  to  detect  a  plagiarism  in  Baude- 
laire. But  she  thought  that  Alexander  Smith  was  still 
alive,  and  she  was  curiously  vague  about  the  career  of 


Tom  Dutt  205 


Sainte  Beuve.  This  inequality  of  equipment  was  a 
thing  inevitable  to  her  isolation,  and  hardly  worth 
recording,  except  to  show  how  laborious  her  mind  was, 
and  how  quick  to  make  the  best  of  small  resources. 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  Sheaf  gleaned  in 
French  Fields  attracted  the  very  minimum  of  attention 
in  England.  In  France  it  was  ,talked  about  a  little 
more.  M.  Garcin  de  Tassy,  the  famous  Orientalist, 
who  scarcely  survived  Torn  by  twelve  months,  spoke 
of  it  to  Mile.  Clarisse  Bader,  author  of  a  somewhat 
remarkable  book  on  the  position  of  women  in  ancient 
Indian  society.  Almost  simultaneously  this  volume 
fell  into  the  hands  of  Torn,  and  she  was  moved  to 
translate  it  into  English,  for  the  use  of  Hindus  less 
instructed  than  herself.  In  January,  1877,  she  accord- 
ingly wrote  to  Mile.  Bader  requesting  her  authorisation, 
and  received  a  prompt  and  kind  reply.  On  the  i8th  of 
March  Toru  wrote  again  to  this,  her  solitary  corre- 
spondent in  the  world  of  European  literature,  and  her 
letter,  which  has  been  preserved,  shows  that  she  had 
already  descended  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of 
death  : 

'*  Ma  constitution  n'est  pas  forte ;  j'ai  contracts  una 
toux  opiniatre,  il  y  a  plus  de  deux  ans,  qui  ne  me 
quitte  point.  Cependant  j'espere  mettre  la  main  k 
I'oeuvre  bientot.  Je  ne  peux  dire,  mademoiselle,  combien 
votre  affection — car  vous  les  aimez,  votre  livre  et  votre 
lettre  en  temoignent  assez — pour  mes  compatriotes  et 
mon  pays  me  touche ;  et  je  suis  fiere  de  pouvoir  le  dire 
que  les  hdroines  de  nos  grandes  Epopees  sont  dignes  de 


2o6  Critical  Kit-Kats 

tout  honneur  et  de  tout  amour.  Y  a-ti-il  d'heroYne  plus 
touchante,  plus  aimable  que  Sita  ?  Je  ne  le  crois  pas. 
Oiiand  f  eniends  ma  mhe  chanter^  le  soir,  les  vieux  chants 
de  notre  pays,  je  pleure  presque  toiijours.  La  plainte  de 
Sita,  quand,  bannie  pour  la  seconde  fois,  elle  erre  dans 
la  vaste  foret,  seule,  le  ddsespoir  et  Teffroi  dans  Tame, 
est  si  pathdtique  qu'il  n'y  a  personne,  je  crois,  qui 
puisse  I'entendre  sans  verser  des  larmes.  Je  vous 
envois  sous  ce  pli  deux  petites  traductions  du  Sanscrit* 
cette  belle  langue  antique.  Malheureusement  j'ai  et6 
obligee  de  faire  cesser  mes  traductions  de  Sanscrit,  il  y 
a  six  mois.  Ma  santd  ne  me  permet  pas  de  les 
continuer." 

These  simple  and  pathetic  words,  in  which  the  dying 
poetess  pours  out  her  heart  to  the  one  friend  she  had, 
and  that  one  gained  too  late,  seem  as  touching  and  as 
beautiful  as  any  strain  of  Marceline  Valmore's  immortal 
verse.  In  English  poetry  I  do  not  remember  anything 
that  exactly  parallels  their  resigned  melancholy.  Before 
the  month  of  March  was  over,  Toru  had  taken  to  her 
bed.  Unable  to  write,  she  continued  to  read,  strewing 
her  sick  room  with  the  latest  European  books,  and 
entering  with  interest  into  the  questions  raised  by  the 
Socidte  Asiatique  of  Paris  in  its  printed  Transactions. 
On  the  30th  of  July  she  wrote  her  last  letter  to  Mile. 
Clarisse  Bader,  and  a  month  later,  on  the  30th  of 
August,  1877,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one  years,  six 
months,  and  twenty-six  days,  she  breathed  her  last  in 
her  father's  house  in  Maniktollah  Street,  Calcutta. 

In  the  first  distraction  of  grief  it  seemed  as  though 


Toru  Dutt  207 


her  unequalled  pcomise  had  been  entirely  blighted,  and 
as  though  she  would  be  remembered  only  by  her  single 
book.  But  as  her  father  examined  her  papers,  one 
completed  work  after  another  revealed  itself.  First  a 
selection  from  the  sonnets  of  the  Comte  de  Grammont, 
translated  into  English,  turned  up,  and  was  printed  in 
a  Calcutta  magazine ;  then  some  fragments  of  an 
English  story,  which  was  printed  in  another  Calcutta 
magazine.  Much  more  important,  however,  than  any 
of  these  was  a  complete  romance,  written  in  French, 
being  the  identical  story  for  which  her  sister  Aru  had 
proposed  to  make  the  illustrations.  In  the  meantime 
Toru  was  no  sooner  dead  than  she  began  to  be  famous. 
In  May,  1 878,  there  appeared  a  second  edition  of  the 
Sheaf  gleaned  in  FremJi  Fields,  with  a  touching  sketch 
of  her  death,  by  her  fatlier ;  and  in  1879  was  published, 
under  the  editorial  care  of  Mile.  Clarisse  Bader,  the 
romance  of  Le  Journal  de  Mile.  UAi-vcrs,  forming  a 
handsome  volume  of  259  pages.  This  book,  begun  as 
it  appears  before  the  family  returned  from  Europe,  and 
finished  nobody  knows  when,  is  an  attempt  to  describe 
scenes  from  modern  French  society,  but  it  is  less  in- 
teresting as  an  experiment  of  the  fancy,  than  as  a 
revelation  of  the  mind  of  a  young  Hindu  woman  of 
genius.  The  story  is  simple,  clearly  told,  and  interest- 
ing ;  the  studies  of  character  have  nothing  French 
about  them,  but  they  are  full  of  vigour  and  orif^inality. 
The  description  of  the  hero  is  most  characteristically 
Indian  : 

"  II    est    beau   en   elTet.     Sa   taille   est    haute,   mais 


2o8  Critical  Kit-Kats 

quelques-uns  la  trouveraient  mince  ;  sa  chevelure  noire 
est  bouclee  et  tombe  jusqu'a  la  nuque  ;  ses  yeux  noirs 
sont  profonds  et  bien  fendus ;  le  front  est  noble ;  la 
levre  superieure,  couverte  par  une  moustache  naissante 
et  noire,  est  parfaitement  modelde ;  son  menton  a 
quelque  chose  de  severe ;  son  teint  est  d'un  blanc 
presque  feminin,  ce  qui  denote  sa  haute  naissance." 

In  this  description  we  seem  to  recognise  some  Surya 
or  Soma  of  Hindu  mythology,  and  the  final  touch, 
meaningless  as  applied  to  an  European,  reminds  us 
that  in  India  whiteness  of  skin  has  always  been  a  sign 
of  aristocratic  birth,  from  the  days  when  it  originally 
distinguished  the  conquering  Aryas  from  the  indi- 
genous race  of  the  Dasyous. 

As  a  literary  composition  Mile.  UArvers  deserves 
considerable  commendation.  It  deals  with  the  ungovern- 
able passion  of  two  brothers  for  one  placid  and  beautiful 
girl,  a  passion  which  leads  to  fratricide  and  madness. 
That  it  is  a  very  melancholy  and  tragical  story  is 
obvious  from  this  brief  suggestion  of  its  contents,  but  it  is 
remarkable  for  coherence  and  self-restraint  no  less  than 
for  vigour  of  treatment.  Toru  Dutt  never  sinks  to 
melodrama  in  the  course  of  her  extraordinary  tale,  and 
the  wonder  is  that  she  is  not  more  often  fantastic  and 
unreal. 

But  I  believe  that  the  original  English  poems,  which 
I  presented  to  the  public  for  the  first  time  in  1882,  will 
be  ultimately  found  to  constitute  Tora's  chief  legacy  to 
posterity.  These  ballads  form  the  last  and  most 
matured  of  her  writings,  and  were  left  so  far  fra,  mentary 


Tom  Datt  209 


at  her  death  that  the  fourth  and  fifth  in  her  projected 
series  of  nine  were  not  to  be  discovered  in  any  form 
among  her  papers.  It  is  probable  that  she  had  not 
even  commenced  them.  Her  father,  therefore,  to  give 
a  certain  continuity  to  the  series,  filled  up  these  blanks 
with  two  stories  from  the  VtsJinupvtrajia  which  origi- 
nall}'  appeared  respectively  in  the  Calcutta  Review 
and  in  the  Bengal  Magazine.  These  are  interesting, 
but  a  little  rude  in  form,  and  they  have  not  the  same 
peculiar  value  as  the  rhymed  octo-syllabic  ballads.  In 
these  last  we  see  Torn  no  longer  attempting  vainly, 
though  heroically,  to  compete  with  European  literature 
on  its  own  ground,  but  turning  to  the  legends  of  her 
own  race  and  country  for  inspiration.  No  modern 
Oriental  has  given  us  so  strange  an  insight  into  the 
conscience  of  the  Asiatic  as  is  presented  in  the  stories 
of  "  Prehlad  "  and  of  "  Savitri,"  or  so  quaint  a  piece 
of  religious  fancy  as  the  ballad  of  "  Jogadhya  Uma." 
The  poetess  seems  in  these  verses  to  be  chanting  to 
herself  those  songs  of  her  mother's  race  to  which  she 
always  turned  with  tears  of  pleasure.  They  breathe  a 
Vedic  solemnity  and  simplicity  of  temper,  and  are 
singularly  devoid  of  that  littleness  and  frivolity  which- 
seem,  if  I  may  judge  by  a  slight  experience,  to  be  the 
bane  of  modern  Indian  literature. 

As  to  the  merely  technical  character  of  the  poems, 
it  may  be  suggested  that  in  spite  of  much  in  them  that 
is  rough  and  inchoate,  they  show  that  Toru  was 
advancing  in  her  mastery  of  English  verse.  Such  a 
stanza  as  this,  selected  out   of  many  no  less  skilful 

o 


2IO  Critical  Kit-Kats 

could  hardly  be  recognised  as  the  work  of  one  by 
whom  the  language  was  a  late  acquirement ; 

What  glcrious  trees  !      The  sombre  saul. 

On  which  the  eye  delights  to  rest — 
The  betel-nut,  a  pillar  tall. 

With  feathery  branches  for  a  crest — 
The  light-leaved  tamarind  spreading  wide-— 

The  pale  faint-scented  bitter  neem. 
The  seemul,  gorgeous  as  a  bride. 

With  f  overs  that  have  the  rubfs  gleam. 

In  other  passages,  of  course,  the  text  reads  like  a  trans- 
lation from  some  stirring  ballad,  and  we  feel  that  it 
gives  but  a  faint  and  discordant  echo  of  the  music 
welling  in  Toru's  brain.  For  it  must  frankly  be  con- 
fessed that  in  the  brief  May-day  of  her  existence  she 
had  not  time  to  master  our  language  as  Blanco  White 
did,  or  as  Chamisso  mastered  German.  To  the  end  of 
her  days,  fluent  and  graceful  as  she  was,  she  was  not 
entirely  conversant  with  English,  especially  with  the 
colloquial  character  of  modern  speech.  Often  a  very 
fine  thought  is  spoiled  for  hypercritical  ears  by  the  queer 
turn  of  expression  which  she  has  innocently  given  to 
it.  These  faults  are  found  to  a  much  smaller  degree 
in  her  miscellaneous  poems.  Her  sonnets,  printed  in 
1882,  seem  to  me  to  be  of  great  beauty,  and  her  longer 
piece  entitled  "  Our  Casuarina  Tree,"  needs  no  apology 
for  its  rich  and  mellifluous  numbers  : 

Like  a  huge  python,  winding  round  and  round 
The  rugged  trunk,  indented  deep  with  scars^ 


Tom  Dutt  211 


Up  to  its  very  summit  near  the  stars, 
A  creeper  climbs,  in  whose  embraces  bound 

No  other  tree  could  live.     But  gallantly 
The  giant  wears  the  scarf,  and  jiowers  are  hung 
In  crimson  clusters  all  the  boughs  among. 

Whereon  all  day  are  gathered  bird  and  bee  i 
And  oft  at  nights  the  garden  overflows 
With  one  sweet  song  that  seem^  to  have  no  close^ 
Sung  darkling  from  our  tree,  while  men  repose. 
When  first  my  casement  is  wide  open  thrown 

At  dawn,  my  eyes  delighted  on  it  rest ; 

Sometimes — and  most  in  winter — on  its  crest 
A  grey  baboon  sits  statue-like  alone 

Watching  tie  sunrise ;  while  on  lower  boughs 
His  puny  of  string  leap  about  and  play  ; 
And  far  and  near  kokilas  hail  the  day  ; 

Aiid  to  their  pastures  wend  our  sleepy  cows  / 
And  in  the  shadow,  on  the  broad  tank  cast 
By  that  hoar  tree,  so  beautiful  and  vast, 

The  water-lilies  spring,  like  snow  enmassed. 

*  *  *  • 

Therefore  1  fain  would  consecrate  a  lay 
Unto  thy  honour.  Tree,  beloved  of  those 
Who  now  in  bkssed  sleep,  for  aye,  repose i 
Dearer  than  life  to  me,  alas  1  were  they  I 

Mays' t  thou  be  numbered  when  my  days  are  dttne 
With  deathless  Trees — it  lie  those  in  Borrowdale, 
Under  whose  awful  branches  lingered  pale 

"  Fear,  trembling  Hope,  and  Death,  the  skeleton. 
And  Time,  the  shadow  ;"  and  though  weak  the  verse 
That  would  thy  beauty  fain,  oh  fain  rehear sey 
May  Love  defend  thee  from  Oblivion's  curse. 


212  Critical  Kit-Kats 

It  is  difficult  to  exaggerate  when  we  try  to  estimate 
what  we  have  lost  in  the  premature  death  of  Toru  Dutt. 
Literature  has  no  honours  which  need  have  been  be- 
yond the  grasp  of  a  girl  who  before  the  age  of  twenty- 
one,  and  in  languages  separated  from  her  own  by  so 
deep  a  chasm,  had  produced  so  much  of  lasting  worth. 
And  her  courage  and  fortitude  were  worthy  of  her  in- 
telligence. Among  "  last  words  "  of  celebrated  people, 
that  which  her  father  has  recorded,  **It  is  only  the 
physical  pain  that  makes  me  cry,"  is  not  the  least  re- 
markable, or  the  least  significant  of  strong  character. 
It  was  to  a  native  of  our  island,  and  to  one  ten  years 
senior  to  Toru,  to  whom  it  was  said,  in  words  more 
appropriate,  surely,  to  her  than  to  Oldham, 

Tky  generous  fruits,  though  gathered  ere  their  prime, 

Still  shozued  a  quickness,  and  maturing  time 

But  mellows  what  we  write  to  the  dull  sweets  of  Rime, 

That  mellow  sweetness  was  all  that  Toru  lacked  to 
perfect  her  as  an  English  poet,  and  of  no  other  Oriental 
who  has  ever  lived  can  the  same  be  said.  When  the 
history  of  the  literature  of  our  country  comes  to  be 
written,  there  is  sure  to  be  a  page  in  it  dedicated  to  this 
fragile  exotic  blossom  of  song. 

1S82. 


M.   JOSd-MARIA    DE    HEREDIA 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia 

TfIAT  M.  Zola  will,  in  due  course  of  time,  push  his 
way  into  the  Institute,  and  become  authorised  to  wear 
the  greenest  of  palm-shoots,  is  doubtless  inevitable,  nor 
have  I  any  objection  to  offer.  But,  for  the  life  of  me, 
I  cannot  understand  why,  all  of  a  sudden,  the  English 
press  has  become  so  exceedingly  anxious  to  see  this 
little  affair  of  literary  honour  arranged.  The  reception 
given  in  this  country  to  the  latest  election  at  the  French 
Academy  was  comically  unaccountable.  Why  has  it 
abruptly  become  necessary  that  a  dignified,  ancient  and 
scholarly  body  should  open  its  doors  to  the  author  of 
Pot-Bouille,  knocking  so  noisily  upon  them  with  re- 
verberations of  congenial  brass  ?  The  spirit  of  modern 
democracy,  we  are  told,  demands  that  the  possessor  of 
such  swarms  of  editions  should  be  an  Academician,  and 
when  he  is  kept  waiting  for  a  little  while  (it  will  only  be 
for  a  little  while — calm  yourself,  beating  heart  of  the 
democracy !),  shouts  out  that  the  Academy  is  decrepit 
and  obsolete,  and  must  be  swept  off  the  face  of  the  earth. 
Permit  the  great  M.  Zola  to  kick  his  heels  in  the  cold, 
while  you  let  in  a  gentleman  who  has  only  written  a  few 
sonnets  ?  Shameful  nepotism,  shocking  decrepitude  1 
The  fact  is,  it  is  time  that  we  should  cease  to  laugh  at 


2i6  Critical  Kit-Kats 

the  French  for  iheir  affection  for  the  Russians.  We  are 
making  ourselves  still  more  ridiculous  by  our  prepos- 
terous solicitude  for  M.  Zola. 

With  those  who  regret  that  our  Tudor  kings  started 
no  such  literary  order  of  merit  as  the  French  Academy, 
I  do  not  greatly  sympathise,  and  still  less  with  those 
who  recommend  the  creation  to-day  of  a  brand-new  in- 
stitution of  the  kind.  Still,  looking  across  the  water 
to  France,  I  do  see  that  there  are  functions  which  so 
ancient  a  body  as  that  which  sits  in  the  Mazarine  Palace 
can,  and  does,  exercise  with  high  advantage  to  the 
public.  The  inclusion  of  M.  Zola,  though  not  neces- 
sarily foreign  to  the  aim  of  such  a  body,  does  eminently 
strike  me  as  not  being  one  of  those  functions.  He  has 
his  editions,  his  wealth,  and  his  fame,  the  tributes  of 
the  democracy.  But  what  a  set  of  men  in  the  position 
of  the  thirty-nine  electing  Academicians,  raised  above 
fear  of  public  displeasure,  made  a  law  unto  themselves, 
can  do  is  to  protect  and  reward  distinguished  and  deli- 
cate talent,  of  a  very  original  order,  which  does  not 
appeal  to  the  loud  public.  The  French  Academy  can' 
afford  to  wave  aside  the  novelist  who  comes  with 
all  his  drums  and  trumpets,  and  a  flushed  cohort 
of  camp  followers  shouting  in  his  wake,  and  can  say 
to  the  poet  who  does  not  strive  nor  cry,  who  culti- 
vates a  noble  art  in  austerity,  "Be  pleased,  sir,  to 
join  our  company  ;  there  will  be  room  for  this  popular 
gentleman  by-and-by."  That  the  French  Academy 
has  done  this  by  electing  M.  de  Heredia  to  the  seat 
vacated  by  the  death  of  M.  de  Mazade  seems  to  me 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia  217 

an   unusually  effective  exercise  of  a  wholesome  and 
valuable  privilege. 

Wholesome,  because  it  is  necessary  for  the  health  of 
the  intellectual  life  in  this  crowded  and  degenerated 
atmosphere  of  ours  to  be  encouraged  to  climb  the  heights 
and  taste  the  colder  air ;  valuable,  because  it  rewards  a 
decent  and  dignified  ambition  in  a  mode  that  is  more 
direct  than  any  other  which  is  open  to  the  literary  world 
of  to-day.  The  election  of  M.  de  Heredia  to  the  French 
Academy  is  an  important  and  critical  event  in  the 
imaginative  history  of  our  time,  because  it  is  a  public 
statement  of  the  value  set  by  a  group  of  men  of  high 
and  3'et  dissimilar  intellectual  character  on  work  that  is 
superlatively  well  done,  on  the  w^ork  of  a  craftsman  who 
has  not  allowed  himself  to  be  hurried  or  disturbed  by 
any  pressure  from  without,  Vv^ho  has  not  cared  to  move 
an  inch  from  his  path  to  please  the  many  or  the  few, 
who  has  spent  half  a  lifetime  in  the  pursuit  of  a 
splendid  perfection,  a  faultless  magnificence  in  concen- 
trated and  chiselled  verse.  It  is  the  occasional  appear- 
ance, in  our  slipshod  world,  of  artists  so  consummate 
as  M.  de  Heredia  that  keeps  poetry  from  being  degraded 
to  a  mere  shabby  volubility.  Data  Romanis  venia  est 
indigna  poctts,  and  the  only  way  in  which  the  standard 
can  be  raised  to  its  normal  severity  is  by  occasional 
reference  to  those  writers  who  live  up  to  the  most  rigid 
executive  ideal.  It  is  as  a  jeweller  in  verse,  a  poetical 
artificer  of  the  very  highest  merit  'that  M.  de  Heredia 
has  earned  for  himself  the  applause  of  the  Institute. 
"We  hear  a  great  deal  of  the  experimentalists  who  are 


21 8  Critical  Kit-Kats 

trying  to  dissolve  and  deliquesce  the  prosody  of  France, 
Let  us  acquaint  ourselves,  in  justice,  with  the  man  who 
has  done  most  during  the  last  ten  years  to  keep  it  as 
hard  and  as  brilliant  as  fine  bronze. 


So  far  as  I  am  aware,  no  biography  or  even  bio- 
graphical sketch  of  M.  de  Heredia  has  ever  been  pub- 
lished. His  is  the  proud  and  self-contained  nature,  no 
doubt,  that  shrinks  from  publicity  as  from  a  familiar 
touch.  The  details  I  give  below  are  the  mosaic  of  an 
affectionate  though  secret  admirer,  who  has  carefully 
stored  up,  through  more  than  twenty  years,  ever}^  scrap 
of  information  which  has  fallen  in  his  way  respecting 
a  poet  whose  genius  is  intimately  sympathetic  to  him. 

Jose-Maria  de  Heredia  is  a  Cuban  by  birth.  He 
traces  his  ancestry  direct  from  one  of  the  first  con- 
querors of  the  New  World.  He  is  of  the  bluest  blood 
of  Spanish  colonial  aristocracy.  He  tells  me  that  he  is 
the  direct  descendant  of  that  Adelantado  don  Pedro  de 
Heredia,  who  came  to  America  in  the  company  of  the 
second  Admiral  Diego  Columbus,  and  who  founded 
Cartagena  in  the  West  Indies.  To  this  ancestor  he 
has  alluded  in  several  of  his  poems.  In  the  extreme 
south  of  the  island,  above  the  bay  and  city  of  Santiago 
de  Cuba,  in  a  glen  of  the  Sierra  Maestra  looking  over 
the  ocean  southward  towards  Jamaica,  he  was  born  on 
the  22nd  of  November,  1842.  His  home  was  the 
coffee  plantation  of  La  Fortuna,  one  of  the  last  posses- 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia  219 

sions  of  a  noble  but  impoverished  family.  On  the 
mother's  side,  however,  he  is  of  French  origin.  At 
the  age  of  eight  he  was  brought  to  Paris,  and  received 
his  earliest  education  at  the  College  of  St.  Vincent  at 
Senlis.  Nine  years  in  Europe  made  a  Frenchman  of 
him,  but  at  seventeen  he  went  back  to  Cuba.  For  a 
year  he  worked  at  the  University  of  Havannah  ;  then, 
about  i860,  finally  returned  to  France,  aiid  took  up  his 
studies  in  the  law.  He  tells  me  that  he  sadly  neglected 
them,  and  then,  with  greater  zest,  entered  the  Ecole 
des  Chartes.  In  Cuba,  I  am  told,  they  reproach  him 
with  having  robbed  Spain  of  a  Spanish  poet ;  but, 
■in  truth,  M.  de  Heredia  is  scarcely  more  a  Spaniard 
than  Rossetti  was  an  Italian. 

In  1862  he  published  his  first  verses  in  the  then 
existing  Rcvicc  de  Paris,  the  far-away  ancestor  of  MM. 
Darmesteter  and  Ganderax's  new  venture.  I  know 
not  what  these  "first  verses  "  were.  But  in  1866  he 
was  one  of  the  happy  band  of  lyric  boys  who  started 
the  Parnasse  Contemporain,  that  Germ  of  France.  This 
anthology  was  brought  out  under  the  auspices  and  the 
patronage  of  M.  Leconte  de  Lisle,  whose  influence  over 
recent  French  poetry  has  been  greater  than  that  of 
any  other  person.  Among  the  youthful  Parnassians 
were  almost  all  the  men  who  have  since  that  day  come 
prominently  to  the  front  in  poetical  literature — Sully 
Prudhomme  and  Frangois  Coppee,  Paul  Verlaine  and 
CatuUe  Mendes,  Stephane  Mallarme  and  Leon  Dierx. 
Among  them,  and  from  the  very  first,  the  young 
Heredia  distinguished  himself  by  the  severe  ideal  of 


220  Critical  Kit-Kats 

his  art,  and  by  his  disdain  of  the  common  tricks  by 
which  men  rise.  He  remembered  the  blood  of  the 
founder  of  Cartagena. 

In  one  of  his  delicious  essays,  M.  Anatole  France, 
himself  a  Parnassian,  recalls  the  features  of  that  happy 
time.  He  has  a  little  vignette  portrait  of  each  of  his 
old  comrades,  and  here  is  what  he  says  of  the  poet  of 
Lcs  Trophces : 

"  Alone,  or  almost  alone,  in  our  ce'nacle,  M.  Jose- 
Maria  de  Heredia,  although  defrauded  of  a  great  part 
of  the  treasure  of  his  ancestors,  the  conqitisiadoreSy 
affected  the  young  gentleman  of  fashion,  and  smoked 
excellent  cigars.  His  neckties  were  as  splendid  as  his 
sonnets.  But  it  was  of  the  sonnets  alone  that  we  were 
jealous  ;  for  we  all  disdained  the  gifts  of  fortune.  We 
loved  nothing  but  fame,  and  we  wished  that  if  we  were 
famous  it  might  be  in  a  discreet  and  almost  secret 
way." 

Already,  in  this  ver}'  early  time,  it  was  the  magnifi- 
cent precision  of  Heredia's  sonnets  which  attracted  the 
attention  of  his  elders ;  and  Theophile  Gautier,  that 
benevolent  Ol3'mpian,  exclaimed,  on  putting  down  the 
Parnasse  Conteniporain,  "  Heredia,  I  love  you,  be- 
cause the  name  you  bear  is  exotic  and  sonorous,  and 
because  you  make  verses  that  curl  up  at  the  ends  like 
heraldic  scallops."  ^ 

The  rest  of  the  Parnassians,  one  after  another,  com- 
mitted little  volumes  of  independent  verse,  the  first 
steps  in  so  many  active  poetic  careers.  M.  de  Heredia 
alone  remained  aloof  and  impersonal,  now  and  then 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia         221 

dropping  an  impeccable  sonnet  into  somebody  else's 
nest.  He  was  prominent  in  the  second  Parnasse 
Contemporain,  that  of  1869.  My  own  first  acquaint- 
ance with  him  was  made  in  a  volume  of  Sonnets  et 
Emix-fortcSy  published  by  Lemerre  in  1869,  and  now 
extremely  rare.  I  copied  out,  more  than  twenty  years 
ago,  from  this  expensive  and  unattainable  work,  a 
sonnet  which  appeared  to  me  then,  as  it  still  appears, 
of  a  magnificent  and  refulgent  perfection.  This  was 
Les  Conqiic'rantSy  now  the  first  of  a  sequence  of  eight 
poems  : 

Comme  un  vol  ae  gerfauts  hurs  du  crarnier  natal^ 
Fatigues  de  porter  leurs  misires  hautaines^ 
De  Palos  de  Moguer,  routiers  et  capitaines 
Partaient,  ivres  d'ufi  reve  hero'ique  et  brutal. 

Us  allaient  conquerir  le  fabuleux  metal 
^e  Cipango  murit  dans  ses  mines  lointaineSf 
Et  les  vents  aliz.es  inclinaient  leurs  antennes 
Aux  lords  mysterieux  du  monde  Occidental, 

Chaque  soir,  esperant  des  lendemains  epiqueSy 
Vazur  phosphorescent  de  la  mer  des  Tropiques 
Enchant  ait  leur  sommeil  d^un  mirage  dore  ; 

Ou  penches  a  Vavant  des  blanches  caravelles^ 
lis  regardaient  monter  en  un  del  ignore 
Du  fond  de  I'Ocean  des  etoiles  nouvelles, 

A  little  later,  in  the  charming  Le  Livre  des  Sonnets 
edited  by  Charles  Asselineau,  other  specimens  came  to 
light,  and  under  the  same  mysterious  conditions.     It 


222         ,        Critical  Kit-Kats 

became,  at  last,  a  sort  of  collector's  joy  to  watch 
the  newspapers  and  reviews  for  stray  sonnets  of 
Heredia.  Once  there  came,  I  forget  where,  a  batch  of 
no  fewer  than  twenty-five  at  once,  an  event  only  to  be 
paralleled,  as  a  fact  of  exciting  poetical  significance, 
with  the  publication  of  Rossetti's  House  of  Life  in  the 
Forinightly  Review  for  1869.  Those  were  days  when 
a  man  might  trudge  forth  from  his  house  at  the  morn- 
ing hour  and  meet  angels  in  the  street.  "A  happy 
time  that  was,"  as  Wordsworth  says,  "triumphant 
looks  Were  then  the  common  language  of  all  eyes."  I 
hope  the  young  poetical  fellows  nowadays  enjoy  them- 
selves with  as  much  gaiet}''  as  we  did  in  our  implacable 
fanaticism  for  verse;  but  I  fancy  that  the  incessant 
paragraph  and  the  newspaper  column,  avid  of  informa- 
tion, must  lessen  their  pleasures.  Half  of  ours  lay  in 
our  remoteness  and  our  concentrated  narrowness  of 
interest. 

Much  has  changed  since  then,  both  in  London  and 
Paris.  The  whole  face  of  fashion  has  altered  ;  the 
most  famous  names  have  become  part  of  the  heritage 
of  history;  youth,  that  made  us  what  we  were,  and 
painted  the  dull  places  with  such  fiery  colours,  has 
passed.  Only  one  thing  remains  absolutely  unchanged, 
and  that  is  the  work  of  M.  de  Heredia.  He  reminds 
us  of  some  craftsman  in  his  studio,  fingering  his  wax 
and  hammering  his  thin  plates  of  metal,  while  an  army 
marches  into  his  town,  and  is  in  turn  driven  out  of  it. 
He  looks  up,  pale  and  dreamy,  at  the  fall  of  afternoon, 
and  has  not  heard  an  echo  of  the  long  day's  battle. 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia^         223 

The  poet  fashions  his  exquisite  verses,  one  by  one, 
and  the  world  may  look  at  them  or  not,  as  it  pleases. 
Last  summer,  for  the  first  time,  M.  de  Heredia  deigned 
to  collect  his  scattered  sonnets  into  a  volume,  Les 
Trophees*  a  thirteenth  edition  of  which  had  been 
printed  before  the  close  of  1893.  If  he  waited  long, 
until  his  life  had  passed  its  fiftieth  year,  before  making 
an  appeal  to  the  great  public,  his  reticence  has  received 
its  reward.  Rarely,  indeed,  has  a  book  of  poems  so 
severe  in  form,  making  so  stern  a  demand  upon  the 
gravity  of  the  reader,  achieved  so  substantial  a  success. 
And  now,  with  the  slender  yellow  volume  of  Les  Tro- 
phees in  his  hand,  he  steps  lightly  up  the  staircase  of 
the  French  Academy. 


In  all  the  literatures  of  Europe,  the  sonnet  is  pre- 
eminent in  its  pathetic  and  rhetorical  forms.  It  is 
mainly  subjective  and  Petrarchan.  Any  reader  who 
turns  over  the  leaves  of  a  competent  selection  of  English, 
or  French,  or  Italian  sonnets  must  be  struck  with  the 
fact  that  in  their  large  majority  they  express  the  secret 
sentiment  or  emotional  experience  of  the  soul,  and  that 
even  where  they  seem  to  be  descriptive,  they  deal  mainly 
with  the  effect  of  external  phenomena  on  the  moods 
of  the  writer.  No  species  of  poetry  is  more  confidential 
than  the  sonnet ;   none  has  been  used,  since  its  first 

•  Lei  Trophees.  Par  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia.  Paris :  Alphonse  Lemerre. 
1893. 


224  Critical  Kit-Kats 

invention,  more  persistently  for  the  transmission  of 
those  secret  thoughts  which  almost  evade  articulate 
expression.  The  innumerous  sonnet-cycles  of  the 
Elizabethan  age,  from  those  of  Shakespeare  and 
Spenser  downwards,  were  either  pure  exercises  in 
Petrarchan  amorosity,  or  they  gave  voice  to  an  im- 
possible emotion  of  which  the  direct  utterance  would 
have  been  indiscreet.  The  sonnets  of  Milton  are  louder 
in  tone,  and  more  impersonal ;  they  represent,  how- 
ever, the  element  of  pure  and  mellifluous  eloquence 
rather  than  of  detached  poetical  observation.  The 
tone  is  no  longer  the  whisper  of  a  lover  in  pain,  but 
although  the  sonneteer  speaks  from  the  rostrum,  the 
appeal  is  always  to  his  own  experience  and  desires. 

It  is  the  same  in  French  poetry.  It  would  be  difficult 
to  collect  out  of  the  abundant  Petrarchist  literature  of 
the  sixteenth  century  a  very  small  anthology  of  really 
objective  sonnets.  There  are  one  or  two  of  Ronsard's  ; 
there  is  the  mysterious  and  beautiful  octett  of  Amadis 
Jamyn's  "  Les  ombres,  lesesprits,  les  idoles  affreuses  "  ; 
it  would  require  some  research  to  discover  any  other 
specimens  into  whidi  the  personal  note  of  confession, 
entreaty,  or  rhetoric  did  not  enter.  When  the  revival 
of  the  sonnet  began — in  England  more  than  a  hundred 
years  ago,  in  France  more  recently — the  form  was 
again  captured  for  purely  subjective  uses.  There  are, 
of  course,  a  few  impersonal  examples  of  Wordsworth 
and  Keats.  In  our  own  day  we  have  received  some 
exquisite  objective  sonnets  from  Miss  Christina  Rossetti. 
But  these  are  rare  in  England,  and  no  less  rare  in  France, 


M.    Jos^Miiia  de  Heredia 


sestet:  is  7: 

the  frame  is  give: 


which    - 

highh. 

size.     It  is  DOW  ea-^v 

been   fcr   so   ~:Lrv  v 


the  1:-  J  half  a  lifetime. 

My  en     en:    i.c;.-  >.  ^  ^^.  if  I  quote 

in  this  connection  a  :i  ~  to  mysielf : 

"Si  je  m'en  suis  tenu  .i..:   ^  >.  "c'est  qiie 

je  trou\-e   que   dans   sa  :.  ~   i-.ij-stique  et 

p 


2  26  Critical  Kit-Kats 

mathdmatique,  c'est  le  plus  beau  des  po^mes  k  forme 
fixe  et  qu'il  exige,  par  sa  brievetd  et  sa  difficultd,  une 
conscience  dans  I'execution  et  une  concentration  de  la 
pensee  qui  ne  peuvent  qu'exciter  et  pousser  a  la  pc  > 
fection  I'artiste  digne  de  ce  beau  nom." 

The  first  thing  to  be  observed,  in  advancing  along 
this  rare  and  singular  gallery,  is  that  the  paintings  are 
by  no  means  of  an  accidental  arrangement  or  set  in 
d-isultory  sequence.  The  book  is  an  attempt  to  present 
to  the  inward  eye  a  regular  series  of  carefully  selected 
scenes  from  the  imaginative  history  of  the  world.  We 
sh>  ink  with  horror  from  the  notion  of  a  weltgeschichte  in 
quatorzains,  and  M.  de  Heredia,  who  is  a  master  of  the 
art  of  literary  tact,  would  shudder  sympathetically  with 
us.  What  he  designs  is  no  more  than  a  rapid  descent 
of  the  ages,  with  here  and  there  a  momentary  revela- 
tion of  some  highly  suggestive  and  entertaining  scene, 
or  incident,  or  personage,  rapidly  given  and  as  rapidly 
withdrawn,  but  seen  for  that  moment  with  all  the  pre- 
cision and  effulgence  possible,  so  that  in  the  dimness  of 
the  grey  past  this  one  figure  or  incident  ma}'  blaze  out 
like  a  veritable  luminary.  For  this  purpose,  every- 
thing needless,  trifling  or  accidental,  every  triviality  of 
expression,  every  superfluous  phrase  or  image,  must 
be  rigidly  suppressed.  In  so  sudden  and  brief  a  revela- 
tion every  touch  must  burn. 

The  central  characteristic,  then,  of  these  splendid 
sonnets  is  their  technical  perfection.  There  is  nothing 
loose  or  ungirt,  nothing  said  vaguely  because  it  would 
take  time  and  labour  to  be   precise.     M.  de  Heredia 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia  227 

opens  his  poem — for  Les  Trophecs  is  really  one  poem 
in  many  sections — with  a  sonnet  "L'Oubli."  Oblivion, 
indeed,  is  the  enemy  he  attacks.  The  temple  on  the 
G^.secian  promontory  is  ruined  ;  its  goddesses  of  marble 
and  its  heroes  of  bronze  lie  broken  and  defaced  under 
the  dr}'  and  wind-blown  grasses  ;  the  sea  at  the  foot  of 
the  headland  moans  and  bewails  the  dead  sirens  of  long 
ago.  Not  stone  and  not  metal  can  defy  oblivion ;  the 
only  truly  immortal  art,  which  no  caprice  of  man  or 
time  can  destroy,  is  verse.  And  so,  in  verse  that  shall 
be  as  like  hammered  bronze  and  carven  marble  as  he 
can  make  it,  the  proudest  of  modern  poets  will  try  to 
save  the  fleeting  world  of  beauty  from  decay. 

Greece,  first — since  the  savage  and  oriental  parts  of 
human  development,  which  appeal  so  intimately  to  his 
master,  M.  Leconte  de  Lisle,  have  little  or  nothing  to 
say  to  M.  de  Heredia.  For  him  the  symbol  must  be 
clear,  brilliant,  physical ;  he  has  no  pleasure  in 
mysticism  or  in  the  twilight  of  the  intelligence.  And 
this,  indeed,  must  be  confessed  at  once,  that  those  who 
seek  for  tender  notes  and  sunken  lights,  the  vague 
sympathies  of  the  soul,  the  melancholy  music  of 
experience,  may  go  elsewhere  ;  the  poet  of  Les  TropMes 
is  not  for  them.  No  man  has  less  been  touched  by  the 
malady  of  the  age,  no  one  is  less  attracted  to  the 
unknown  and  the  distressful.  M.  de  Heredia  gazes 
straight  at  clear  and  beautiful  things  seen  in  a  blaze  of 
light ;  almost  every  sonnet  of  his  gives  an  impression 
of  translucent  air  and  brilliant  sunshine.  Alone,  among 
French  poets  of  to-day,  the  prevailing  note  of  his  work 


228  Critical  Kit-Kats 

is  joyous  and  heroic.  Those  ages  of  the  world's 
history  please  him  in  which  the  s3'mbolisin  of  the 
imagination  was  sumptuous  and  noble.  He  possesses 
not  a  little  of  the  grandiloquence  of  the  race  from  which 
he  sprang.  His  sonnets  have  the  sound  of  a  clarion, 
the  human  voice  concentrated  and  uplifted  by  being 
blown  through  fine  brass. 

In  the  vestibule  of  his  gallery  of  paintings  we  find 
six  magnificent  studies  of  Hercules  and  the  Centaurs. 
This  hero  pleases  him ;  he  goes  forth  against  lions, 
against  centaurs  (those  emblems  of  hysterical  human 
weakness),  against  perplexed  and  obscure  hydras ;  he 
is  strong  and  clear-headed,  a  lover  of  work  strenuously 
fulfilled.  So  we  find  this  story  of  Hercules  told  in  a 
set  of  ringing  sonnets,  and  we  fancy  ourselves  opening 
the  cabinet  of  a  fifteenth-century  Florentine  medallist. 
With  these  and  a  few  other  exceptions,  the  Greek 
portion  of  Les  Trophees  may  be  passed  over  more 
rapidly  than  the  rest.  The  sonnets  dealing  with  the 
gods  and  the  nymphs  are  somewhat  cold ;  they  are 
marble  plaques  in  low  relief,  like  fragments  of  a 
translation  of  Sophocles  into  sculpture.  In  this  section 
of  his  book,  the  poet  becomes  most  truly  inspired,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  when  he  deals  with  the  legend  of 
Pegasus,  an  animal  for  whom  he  nourishes  a  very 
tender  regard.  From  several  Perseus  and  Andromeda 
sonnets  I  select  one,  as  it  seems  to  me,  of  incomparable 
beauty : 


M.  Jose-Maria  de   Heredia  229 

Au  milieu  de  Pecume  arretant  son  essor, 
Le  Cavalier  vainqueur  du  motistre  et  de  M'eduse^ 
Ruisselant  d^une  have  horrible  ou  le  sang  fuse ^ 
Emporte  entre  ses  bras  la  vterge  aux  eheveux  d^or, 

Sur  Vetalon  divin,  frlre  de  Chrysaor, 
^li  piaffe  dans  la  mer  et  hennit  et  refuse^ 
II  a  pose  r  Amante  eperdue  et  confuse 
^i  lui  rit  et  Vetreint  et  qui  sanglote  encor. 

II  Vembrasse.     La  houle  enveloppe  leur  groupe. 

Elle,  d'unfaible  effort,  ramHe  sur  la  croupe 

Ses  beaux  pieds  quenfuyant  baise  unfot  vagabond: 

Mais  Pegase  irrit'e  par  le  fouet  de  la  lame, 
A  Vappel  du  Heros  senlevant  d'un  seul  bond^ 
Bat  le  del  ebloui  de  ses  ailes  de  flamme. 

As  we  decline  to  the  latest  schools  of  Greece,  such 
successes  as  these  are  oftener  repeated.  In  dealing  with 
the  sturdier  pictures  of  antique  life,  I  think  that  no 
critic  can  deny  the  superiority  of  M.  Leconte  de  Lisle. 
The  Hyperion  of  Keats  is  probably  the  only  modern 
rival  of  the  best  portions  of  Les  Poemcs  Antiques. 
M.  de  Heredia  cannot  compress  this  vast  music  into  the 
brief  compass  of  his  sonnet,  nor  do  the  exigencies  of 
his  form,  complicated  and  concentrated  as  it  is  bound 
to  be,  permit  these  broader  effects.  But  when  it  is 
not  the  tragedians  whom  he  essays  to  follow,  but  when 
the  lapidary  art  of  the  Anthology  inspires  him,  when  a 
runner,  or  a  charioteer,  the  tomb  of  a  grasshopper,  or 
the  prayer  of  shepherds  to  Pan,  is  the  subject  of  one 


230  Critical  Kit-Kats 

of  his  lucid  and  admirable  sonnets,  then  he  rises  to  the 
height  of  his  genius.  Nor,  let  it  at  once  be  said,  with 
this  S3-mpathy  for  the  civilised  decline  of  a  social 
order,  does  any  littleness,  any  alexandrianism,  any 
love  of  the  quip  or  the  conceit  find  place.  All  is  on  a 
restrained  scale,  but  as  pure  and  dignified  as  a  relief 
by  Donatello. 

When  the  poet  reaches  Rome  and  the  incursion  of 
the  Barbarians,  the  same  characteristics  are  displayed. 
There  is  scarcely  a  touch  of  Virgil,  nothing  of  Horace 
or  Lucretius,  but  not  a  little  of  Catullus,  and  the  very 
soul  of  Martial.  Not  merely,  as  may  be  seen  by  the 
comparison  of  the  sonnet  called  *'  Lupercus  "  with  the 
118th  epigram  of  the  first  book,  is  the  very  wine  of 
the  last-named  poet  poured,  without  loss  of  a  drop 
spilled  or  diluted,  into  the  chalice  of  the  sonnet,  but 
that  is  said  which  the  manner  of  Martial  suggests,  yet, 
if  it  be  not  blasphemy  to  think  so,  better  said.  Will  the 
shade  of  Desire  Nisard  permit  it  to  be  whispered,  for 
instance,  that  this  is  written  as  Martial  would  have 
written  it,  with  modern  knowledge,  and  a  modern 
vocabulary  to  aid  him  ? 


AUX  MONTAGNES  DIVINES. 


Geminus  Servus 
et  pro  suis  conservis. 


Glaciers  bleus,  pus  de  marbre  et  d^ardoise^  granitSy 
Moraines  dont  le  verity  du  Nethou  jusqu'a  Begle^ 
Arrache,  brule  et  tord  le  froment  et  le  seigle. 
Cols  abrupt s^  lacsyforets  pleines  d'' ombre  et  de  nidsl 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia  231 

Antres  sourds,  noirs  vallons  que  les  anciens  bannis^ 
Plutot  que  de  ployer  sous  la  servile  regie, 
Hanterent  avec  Pours,  le  loup.  Visard  et  Vaigle, 
Precipices,  torrents,  gouffres,  soyez  b'enis  ! 

Jyantfui  Pergastule  et  le  dur  municipe, 

Vesclave  Geminus  a  d'edi'e  ce  cippe 

Aux  Monts,  gardiens  sacres  de  I'dpre  liberti ; 

Et  sur  ces  sommets  c lairs  ou  le  silence  vibre, 

Dans  Fair  inviolable,  immense  et  pur,  jet'e, 

Je  crois  entendre  encor  le  cri  d'un  homme  libre  t 


In  the  section  of  his  book  entitled  The  Middle  Ages 
and  the  Renaissance,  M.  de  Heredia  relinquishes  himself 
to  the  pleasure  of  seizing  little  characteristic  episodes, 
and  treating  them  in  the  manner  of  a  goldsmith.  We 
find  sonnets  in  which  a  picture  of  mediaeval  society  is 
given  with  the  rigidity,  the  clear,  shadowless  colour, 
and  the  transparency  of  a  stained-glass  window  at 
Chartres  or  Le  Mans;  in  which  Balthazar,  Melchior, 
and  Caspar,  on  their  road  to  Bethany,  cross  a  back- 
ground of  turquoise-coloured  enamel ;  in  which  an 
epitaph  is  murmured  over  the  extremely  irreligious 
corpse  of  Hyacinthe,  Seigneur  de  Maugiron,  while 
tears  furrow  the  rose-paint  on  the  cheeks  of  Henri  III. ; 
in  which  a  fading  sheet  of  vellum,  illuminated  by  Clovis 
Eve,  is  congratulated  on  having  been  caressed  by  the 
fingers  of  Diane  de  Poictiers.  The  censer,  set  with 
rubies,  pearls,  and  beryls,  over  the  chiselling  of  which 
Fray  Juan  de  Segovia  wore  out  his  eyesight,  this  is 


232  Critical  Kit-Kats 

more,  one  feels,  to  M.  de  Heredia  than  the  ritual  in 
which  it  is  to  be  waved,  and  it  is  part  of  his  sincerity 
that  he  apes  no  wide  human  sympathies  in  his  con- 
spectus of  historical  impressions. 

But  he  is  Cuban  and  a  descendant  of  the  Conquis- 
tadores;  and  he  is  lifted  to  more  heroic  flights,  and 
a  grander,  because  broader,  conception  of  life,  when,  in 
a  series  of  sonnets  from  which  I  have  already  quoted 
one,  he  celebrates  the  deeds  of  his  colonial  ancestors. 
He  passes  on  to  a  lament  over  the  decay  of  Spanish 
pride  in  the  Americas,  bewailing  in  one  melodious 
sonnet  after  another  the  ruin  of  such  dazzling  hopes 
and  the  waste  of  prowess  so  magnificent.  None  of  the 
poems  of  this  section  is  more  grandiose,  nor  any  more 
interesting  to  us  Englishmen,  than  the  following  on 
the  decline  of  Cartagena ; 

A  UNE  VILLE  MORTE. 

Cartagena  de  Indias, 
1532-1583-1697. 

Morne  Ville,jadis  reine  des  Oceans! 

Aujourd^ hut  le  requin  poursuit  en  paix  les  scombres 

Et  le  nuage  errant  allonge  seul  des  ombres 

Sur  ta  rade  ou  roulaient  les  gallons  g'eants. 

Depuis  Drake  et  Vassaut  des  Anglais  mecreants^ 
Tes  murs  d'esempar'es  croulent  en  noirs  d'ecombres^ 
Et,  comme  un  glorieux  collier  de  perles  sombres^ 
Des  boulets  de  Pointis  montrent  les  trous  beants. 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia  233 

Entre  le  del  qui  brule  et  la  mer  qui  moutonne^ 

Au  somnolent  soleil  d'un  midi  monotone, 

Tu  songes,  o  Guerriere,  aux  vieux  Conquistadors  ; 

Et  dans  Penervement  des  nuits  chaudes  et  calmes^ 

Servant  ta  gloire  eteinte,  o  Cite,  tu  Vendors 

Sous  les  palmierSy  au  long  fremissement  des  palmes. 

We  pass  on  to  '*  The  Orient  and  the  Tropics."  Here, 
again,  we  seem  to  catch  something  of  the  accent  of  M. 
Leconte  de  Lisle,  to  whom  such  figures  as  Kham  and 
Hathor  seem  naturally  dedicated.  But  in  Japan  M.  de 
Heredia  recovers  the  whole  of  his  originality.  He  has 
succeeded,  alone  among  poets  of  the  West,  in  extract- 
ing from  the  art  and  the  history  of  that  miraculous 
archipelago  its  heroic  and  chivalrous  splendour. 

We  are  accustomed  to  an  infusion  of  the  sweeter 
tones,  the  more  diaphanous  graces  of  Japanese  life  into 
our  poetry  and  our  painting.  What  is  novel,  what  M.  de 
Heredia  alone  has  given,  is  the  mystery  of  the  ancient 
aristocracy  of  Japan,  with  its  fierce  disregard  of  life, 
its  savage  sumptuousness,  its  extraordinary  fulness  of 
violent  and  vivid  colour.  He  paints  for  us  the  Daimio 
on  the  field  of  battle,  fluttering  his  satin-covered  iron 
fan  in  front  of  his  glaring  eyes,  while  the  lacquer  coat- 
of-mail  creaks  on  his  panting  bosom  ;  or  he  gives  us  so 
strange  a  glimpse  into  the  life  of  bygone  Japan  as  is 
packed  into  this  amazing  sonnet : 


234  Critical  Kit-Kats 

LE  SAMOURAI. 

C'etait  un  homme  a  deux  sabra, 

D^un  doigt  distrait  frolant  la  sonore  bwa^ 
A  tr avers  les  bambous  tresses  en  fine  latte, 
Elle  a  vu,  par  la  plage  eblouissante  et  plate^ 
S'avancer  le  vainqueur  que  son  amour  reva» 

Cest  lui.     Sabres  aufianc,  I'eventail  haut,  il  VM, 
La  cordeliere  rouge  et  le  gland  ecarlate 
Coupent  Parmure  sombre^  et,  sur  Pepaule,  eclate 
Le  blason  de  Hizen  ou  de  Tokungawa. 

Ce  beau  guerrier  vetu  de  lames  et  de  plaques^ 
Sous  le  bronze,  la  soie  et  les  brilla?ites  laques, 
Semble  un  crustace  noir,  gigantesque  et  vermeil, 

II  Pa  vue,     II  sourit  dans  la  barbe  du  masque, 

Et  son  pas  plus  hat  if  fait  reluire  au  soleil 

Les  deux  antennes  d^or  qui  tremblent  a  son  casque. 

The  sequence  of  Les  Trophies  closes  with  a  series 
of  selected  sonnets  entitled  "  Nature  and  Dream."  In 
these  the  poet  quits  the  field  of  history,  and  concen- 
trates his  vision  on  such  episodes  of  modern  life  and 
landscape  as  are  specially  sympathetic  to  him.  He 
admits  many  things  here  that  help  us  to  form  an  exact 
impression  of  his  own  mind.  He  dwells  with  affec- 
tionate complacency  over  the  destruction  of  all  that 
made  Sicily  what  she  was  in  antiquity,  and  the  dura- 
bility amid  the  general  wreck  of  a  few  coins  in  which 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia  235 

the  beauty  of  the  Sicilian  virgins  is  still  immortal.  He 
raises  a  picture  of  the  gorgeous  funerals  of  ancient 
Greek  warriors,  descending  to  Hades  surrounded  by 
all  the  pomp  and  glory  of  their  fellow-countrymen, 
while  the  French  poet  himself  will  one  of  these  days 
share  the  inglorious  burial  which  is  administered  in  turn 
to  all  members  of  the  democracy  : 

Et  pourtant  f  ai  rive  ce  destin  glorieux 
De  tomber  au  soleil  aiiisi  que  les  a'ieux, 
Jeune  encore  et  pleure  des  h'eros  et  des  vierges. 

In  his  aspect  of  nature,  in  his  moods  towards  life  as  it 
manifests  itself  to  us  to-day,  there  is  no  petulance  but 
a  marked  and  ever-present  sense  of  regretful  loss,  only 
to  be  redeemed  by  a  passionate  and  vivid  realisation  of 
scenes  and  objects  otherwise  lost  for  ever. 

It  should,  perhaps,  be  added  here  that  the  volume  of 
Les  Trophe'es  is  not  entirely  devoted  to  sonnets.  There 
are  three  mediaeval  Spanish  romances,  composed  in 
terza  rmia,  and  a  somewhat  extended  epical  study,  in 
couplets,  called  Les  Conguerants  de  VOr.  Each  of 
these  is  vigorously  written,  and  worthy  of  study,  but 
neither  induces  the  critical  reader  to  waver  in  his 
conviction  that  the  sonnet  was  the  province  of  poetry 
which  M.  de  Heredia  was  born  to  occupy. 

Nor  has  he  confined  himself  entirely  to  verse.  M.  de 
Heredia  is  the  author  of  a  translation,  in  four  large 
volumes,  of  La  Conqmte  du  Mexiqiie  of  Bernal  Diaz,  in 
which,  by  a  sustained  effort  of  style,  he  has  transformed 
the  entire  narrative  into  such  French  of  the  sixteenth 


236  Critical  Kit-Kats 

century  as  Agrippa  d'Aubignd  might  have  signed. 
Lastly,  in  1894,  in  a  little  book  illustrated  by  Daniel 
Vierge,  the  poet  gave  us  a  version  of  that  curious 
picaresque  romance,  La  Nonne  Alferez, 


To  call  Josd-Maria  de  Heredia  a  great  poet  would 
be  to  misuse  language.  He  lacks  the  breadth  and 
humanity  of  the  leaders  of  poetry.  But,  beyond  all 
question,  he  is  a  great  poetic  artist  and  probably  the 
most  remarkable  now  ahve  in  Europe.  The  few 
quotations  which  I  have  been  able  to  give  in  the 
preceding  pages  will  undoubtedly  be  enough  to  prove 
this  fact  to  any  who  have  not  yet  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  his  work;  and  M.  de  Heredia  is  none  of  those 
writers  from  whom  an  indulgent  reviewer  can  select 
pieces  which  give  an  impression  of  far  higher  merit 
than  the  perusal  of  the  actual  volume  justifies. 

Perhaps  his  most  singular  characteristic,  the  evidence 
of  a  self-control  almost  without  parallel  in  recent  litera- 
ture, is  the  high  level  of  workmanship  which  runs  through 
his  entire  published  poetry.  He  must  sometimes  write 
poor  verse,  one  fancies,  since  he  is  mortal,  but  at  least 
he  never  publishes  it.  Some  numbers  in  Les  Trophecs 
are  more  interesting  than  others ;  it  is  difficult  to 
admit  that  any  are  better  written.  From  beginning  to 
end  the  book  rings  with  melody,  each  sonnet  brings 
up  before  the  inward  eye  a  luminous  picture,  in  a  clear 
sunlit  atmosphere,  flashing  with  colour,  sharply  defined, 


M.  Jose-Maria  de  Heredia  237 

completely  provided  with  every  artifice  and  accomplish- 
ment of  learning,  taste,  and  craftsmanship.  The  only 
objection,  indeed,  which  one  is  inclined  to  bring  against 
M.  de  Heredia  as  a  poet  is  the  result  of  this  uniform 
strenuousness.  One  wishes  that  all  were  not  quite  so 
metallic  in  sound,  so  sumptuous  in  colour,  so  radiantly 
and  sonorously  objective.  The  softer  stop  is  missed, 
the  pathetic  and  mysterious  qualities  are  neglected. 
But  in  these  slipshod  days,  it  is  no  small  thing  to  find 
that  poets  still  exist  who  hold  their  art  in  chivalric 
honour,  and  who  would  rather  be  banished  from  their 
country  than  allow  a  loose  rhyme  to  escape  them,  or 
commit  a  solecism  in  prosody. 

1894. 


WALTER    PATER 


Walter  Pater 

A    PORTRAIT 

Few  recent  events  can  have  surprised  and  saddened 
the  sincere  lovers  of  hterature  more  than  the  death,  in 
middle  life,  of  Walter  Pater.  A  peculiar  vexation,  so 
to  speak,  was  added  to  the  natural  grief  such  a  loss 
must  have  caused,  by  the  strange  inexactitude,  in 
matters  of  detail,  which  marked  almost  all  the  notices 
of  his  career  which  appeared  at  the  time.  In  most  of 
these  notices,  it  is  true,  there  was  manifested  a  wish  to 
pay  homage  to  one  oi  the  most  exquisite,  the  most 
self-respecting,  the  most  mdividual  prose-writers  of  the 
age  ;  but  knowledge,  especially  of  his  earlier  years  and 
intellectual  development,  was  lacking.  He  was  one 
who  never  had  tempted  the  interviewer,  who  had  never 
chatted  to  the  press  about  himself,  and  facts  regarding 
him  were  not  at  that  abrupt  moment  forthcoming. 

How  far  accidents  of  time  and  place  were  responsible 
for  aiding  this  condition  of  things  it  were  now  perhaps 
idle  to  speculate.  The  fame  of  Walter  Pater  will  not  be 
wrecked  on  the  holiday  of  an  editor  or  the  indolence  of 
a  reporter.  It  is  grounded  on  the  respect  which  has 
not  yet  failed  to  follow  pure  and  distinguished  excel- 
lence in  the  art  of  writing.     As  years  go  on,  he  will 

Q 


242  Critical  Kit-Kats 

more  and  more  find  his  admirers,  the  rescuers  of  his 
renown.  A  subtle  and  penetrating  essay  by  Mr. 
Lionel  Johnson  (in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  Sep- 
tember 1894)  has  already  pointed  the  way  to  those 
whose  business  it  will  be  to  detect  Pater's  influence 
upon  his  age,  and  to  illustrate  the  individual  merits  of 
his  style.  In  the  following  pages  an  attempt  will  be 
made  to  present  the  facts  of  the  uneventful  career  of 
the  author  of  Marius,  so  oddly  travestied  at  the  moment 
of  his  death,  with  some  regard  to  continuity  and  truth 
In  preparing  this  sketch,  I  have  had  the  encouragement 
and  the  help  of  tne  surviving  members  of  his  family, 
without  whose  co-operation  1  snouid  not  have  under- 
taken such  a  task. 


A  very  considerable  interest  attaches  to  the  parentage 
of  Walter  Pater.  His  family  was  of  Dutch  extraction, 
his  immediate  ancestors  having,  it  is  believed,  come 
over  from  the  Low  Countries  with  William  of  Orange. 
\i  was  said,  and  our  friend  loved  to  believe  it,  that  the 
court-painter,  Jean  Baptiste  Pater,  the  pupil  of  Watteau, 
was  of  the  same  stock.  If  so,  the  relationship  must 
have  been  collater?\  and  not  direct,  for  when  the 
creator  of  so  many  aeiicate/d'fes  champetres  was  painting 
in  Flanders — he  died  in  1736 — the  English  Paters  had 
already  settled  at  Olney,  in  Buckinghamshire,  where 
they  lived  all  through  the  eighteenth  century.  Re- 
served and  shy,  preserving  many  of  their  Dutch 
customs,   they   are   described    in    family   tradition   as 


Walter  Pater  243 


mixing  little  with  their  neighbours,  and  as  keeping 
through  several  generations  this  curious  custom,  that, 
while  the  sons  were  always  brought  up  as  Roman 
Catholics,  the  daughters  were  no  less  invariably  trained 
in  the  Anglican  faith.  The  father  of  Walter  Pater 
quitted  the  Roman  Church  before  his  marriage,  without 
adopting  any  other  form  of  faith,  and  his  two  sons  were 
the  first  Paters  who  were  not  brought  up  as  Catholics. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
•poet  Cowper  was  the  fellow-townsman  and  the  friend 
of  the  Dutch  emigrants  in  Olney,  and  the  family  long 
possessed  some  of  his  verses  in  his  own  manuscript. 
The  son  of  the  man  who  had  known  Cowper  quitted 
the  Buckinghamshire  household,  and  went  out  to 
America.  He  settled  in  New  York,  associating  chiefly 
with  the  Dutch  colony  in  that  city ;  here  his  son, 
Richard  Glode  Pater,  the  father  of  the  critic,  was  born. 
The  family  came  back  in  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century,  and  settled  at  Shadwell,  on  the  north  shore  of 
the  Thames,  between  Wapping  and  Stepney,  a  situation 
now  of  extreme  squalor,  but  eighty  years  ago  still  con- 
sidered countrified  and  pleasant.  Here,  after  his 
father's  death,  Richard  Glode  Pater  continued  to  live, 
a  medical  practitioner  working,  mainly  for  the  love  of 
them,  among  poor  folks  in  the  East  End,  refusing  to 
move  into  a  more  fashionable  quarter,  and  despoiling 
himself  of  his  patrimony  by  his  constant  benevolence. 

To  the  house  in  Shadwell,  Richard  Glode  Pater 
brought  Maria  Hill  as  his  wife,  and  here  were  born  to 
him  four  children,  two  of  them  sons,  of  whom  Waller 


244  Critical  Kit-Kats 

was  the  second.  The  elder  son,  William  Thomson 
Pater,  adopted  his  father's  profession,  and  became  the 
head  of  a  large  lunatic  asylum.  He  died  unmarried,  on 
April  24,  1887,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two,  "quitting,"  in 
his  brother's  words,  "  a  useful  and  happy  life."  In 
him,  however,  with  the  exception  of  a  marked  pleasure 
in  being  surrounded  with  pretty  objects,  not  a  single 
feature  had  ever  shown  itself  of  the  peculiar  intellectual 
characteristics  or  tastes  of  his  brother.  The  future 
critic  was  born  at  Shadwell,  on  August  4,  1839,  re- 
ceiving the  names  Walter  Horatio,  in  compliment  to  a 
cousin  who  survives  him. 

Richard  Glode  Pater  died  so  early  that  his  second 
son  scarcely  remembered  him  in  later  life.  The  mother 
and  grandmother  left  the  house  in  Shadwell,  and  went 
to  live  with  a  sister  of  the  former  at  Enfield,  where  the 
children  were  brought  up.  In  the  retired  neighbour- 
hood of  Chase  Side  they  took  a  house,  which  has  since 
been  pulled  down ;  it  possessed  a  large,  old-fashioned 
garden,  in  v^hich  the  children  found  great  delight.  It 
would  be  an  error  to  trace  in  the  imaginary  portrait, 
called  The  Child  in  the  House,  a  definite  picture  of  the 
early  surroundings  of  Walter  Pater.  The  existence  at 
Enfield  is  hardly  touched  upon  there,  with  the  sole 
exception  of  the  "cry  on  the  stair,"  announcing  the 
death  of  Florian  Deleal's  father ;  this,  it  appears,  is  a 
rennniscence  of  the  decease,  not  of  his  father,  but  of 
his  grandmother,  which  was  so  announced  to  the  house- 
hold at  Enfield.  So  far  as  The  Child  in  the  House 
depicts  a  veritable  scene,  it  presents  to  us  Fish  Hall, 


Walter  Pater  245 

near  Hadlow,  Kent,  the  residence  of  his  godmother 
and  cousin,  Mrs.  Walter  H.  May  ;  this  mansion,  part 
of  which  was  very  old,  was  the  favourite  holiday-haunt 
of  the  little  Paters,  and  a  place  of  mystery  and  romance 
to  Walter. 

If,  however,  The  Child  in  the  House  must  be  accepted 
very  guardedly  as  giving  an  impression  of  the  physical 
surroundings  of  Walter  Pater's  childhood,  much  more 
of  actual  reminiscence  has  been  put  into  Emerald  Uth- 
wart  (a  story  now  reprinted  in  the  Miscellaneous  Studies). 
The  first  elements  of  education  were  given  at  the  private 
house  of  the  head-master  of  the  grammar-school  at 
Enfield,  but  the  earliest  crisis  of  Pater's  Hfe  was  the 
entrance  into  King's  School,  Canterbury,  at  the  age  of 
fourteen.  The  "  old  ecclesiastical  city,"  to  which 
Emerald  proceeds,  is  Canterbury,  closely  and  exactly 
described,  and  the  features  enumerated  in  the  story — 
"  the  curiosities  of  the  Precincts,  the  '  dark  entry,'  the 
rich  heraldries  of  the  blackened  and  mouldering  cloister, 
the  ruined  overgrown  spaces  where  the  old  monastery 
stood,  the  stones  of  which  furnished  material  for  the 
rambling  prebends'  houses" — these  were  features  at 
Canterbury  which  immediately  impressed  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  shy  and  sensitive  little  boy,  and  remained 
with  him  through  life  as  having  given  him  his  earliest 
experience  of  aesthetic  pleasure. 

It  seems  probable  that,  on  the  whole,  this  part  of 
Emerald  Uthwart  may  be  taken  as  strictly  autobio- 
graphical. Pater  was  happy  at  King's  School,  in  spite 
of  his  complete  indifference  to  outdoor  games.     In  his 


246  Critical  Kit-Kats 

first  years  at  public  school  he  was  very  idle  and  back- 
ward, nor  was  it  till  he  reached  the  sixth  form  that  his 
faculties  seemed  really  to  awaken.  He  is  remembered 
as  rather  a  popular  boy,  and  as  years  went  on  his  un- 
questioned ability  inspired  respect.  On  the  day  of 
Pater's  funeral  the  Warden  of  Keble  preached  in  the 
Cathedral  of  Canterbury,  and  was  able  to  record,  in 
touching  phrases,  the  pride  which  the  school  had  always 
felt  in  him,  and  Pater's  own  persistent  attachment  to  the 
school.  From  the  first,  and  before  he  went  to  Canter- 
bury, Walter  had  been  considered  the  "  clever  "  one 
of  the  family  ;  not  specially  precocious,  he  was  always 
meditative  and  serious — marked  from  the  very  first  for 
the  intellectual  life.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that,  quite 
without  prompting  from  without,  and  while  still  at 
Enfield,  all  his  thoughts  were  turned  towards  the 
Church.  He  loved  best  to  organise  a  sort  of  solemn 
processional  game,  in  which  he  took  the  part  of  bishop 
or  cardinal.  From  the  time  when  he  first  began  to 
think  of  a  future  condition,  his  design  was  to  be  a 
clergyman  ;  never,  curiously  enough,  a  priest  in  the 
religion  of  his  fathers,  but  in  the  Anglican  ritual. 
Throughout  hfe,  it  may  here  be  said,  even  in  his  later 
days,  when  his  thoughts  turned  back  more  and  more 
to  theological  pre-occupations,  Walter  Pater  never  had 
any  serious  leaning  towards  Rome.  Yet  there  can  be 
little  question  that  the  heritage  of  his  ancestors,  in 
their  obstinate  adhesion  to  Catholicism,  ha^I  much  to 
do  with  his  haunting  sense  of  the  value  of  the  sensuous 
emblem,  the  pomp  of  colour  and  melody,  in  the  offices 


Walter  Pater  247 


of  religion.  These  tendencies  had  received  a  great 
impetus  while  he  was  yet  a  little  boy,  and  had  not 
proceeded  to  Canterbury,  from  a  visit  he  paid  to  a 
young  friend  who  lived  at  Hursley.  Here  he  attracted 
the  attention  of  Keble,  who  walked  and  talked  much 
with  him,  and  encouraged  him  in  his  religious  aspira- 
tions. Pater  retained  through  life  a  vivid  recollection 
of  this  saintly  man,  although  he  never  saw  him  again. 

Shortly  before  he  left  school,  as  he  was  entering  his 
twentieth  5'ear,  Pater  read  Modern  Painters,  and  came 
very  abruptly  under  the  influence  of  Ruskin.  The 
world  of  art  was  now  for  the  first  time  opened  to  him. 
It  is  necessary  at  this  point  to  refute  an  extraordinary 
fable,  widely  circulated  at  the  time  of  his  death,  to  the 
effect  that  the  finished  and  beautiful  essay  on  "  Winckel- 
mann  "  was  written,  and  even  printed,  while  the  author 
was  a  schoolboy  at  Canterbury.  The  idea  is  prepos- 
terous ;  it  was  not  until  many  years  later  that  Pater 
became  aware  of  the  existence  of  the  German  critic, 
and  his  essay  was  composed  and  published  long  after 
he  was  a  Fellow  of  Brasenose.  It  is  singular,  indeed, 
that  he  is  not  known  to  have  made  any  attempt  to 
write,  either  as  a  schoolboy  or  an  undergraduate,  his 
earliest  essays  being  as  mature  in  style  as  the  author 
was  mature  in  years.  Pater  made  no  painful  experi- 
ments in  authorship,  or,  if  he  did,  he  kept  them  to 
himself.  He  did  not  begin  to  practise  the  art  of 
writing  until  he  had  mastered  all  its  secrets. 

On  June  ii,  1858,  he  entered  Queen's  College, 
Oxford,  as  a  commoner,  with  an  exhibition  from  Canter- 


248  Critical  Kit-Kats 

bury ;  and  four  years  later,  in  the  Michaelmas  Term  of 
1862,  he  took  his  degree,  gaining  only  a  second  class 
in  Literce  Humaniores.  Of  these  years  of  his  under- 
graduate life  it  does  not  appear  that  there  is  much  to 
reveal.  In  bare  rooms,  in  the  dim  back  quadrangle  of 
his  College,  Pater  worked  quietly  and  unobtrusively, 
making  few  friends,  very  shy  and  silent,  hardly  ob- 
served in  the  noisy  Oxford  life  of  thirty-five  years  ago. 
He  was  the  pupil  of  Mr.  W.  W".  Capes,  now  rector  of 
Liphook,  then  bursar  and  tutor  of  Queen's,  and  amongst 
those  very  rare  spirits  who  divined  the  man  he  was  to 
be  was  his  earliest  friend,  Mr.  Ingram  Bywater,  now 
Regius  Professor  of  Greek.  It  is  not  understood  that 
during  these  undergraduate  days  Pater's  mind,  a  seed 
slowly  germinating  in  the  darkness,  showed  much 
partiality  for  pure  literature  or  for  plastic  art.  He  was 
fascinated  mainly  by  the  study  of  logic  and  metaphysic, 
which  were  his  pastimes,  while  the  laborious  business 
of  classical  scholarship  occupied  all  but  his  leisure 
moments.  Whether  any  record  of  these  silent  years 
remains,  even  with  the  few  friends  who  shared  them, 
seems  doubtful.  Pater  never  kept  a  diary,  rarely  wrote 
letters,  and  at  this  time  offered  no  salient  points  for 
observation  to  seize  upon.  Yet  one  far-seeing  man 
had  noted  the  peculiar  originality  of  Pater's  tempera- 
ment. Having  in  the  ordinary  course  of  his  studies 
submitted  some  work  to  Jowett,  that  astute  observer 
was  so  much  struck  with  his  power  that  he  very 
generously  offered  to  coach  him  for  nothing.  The  offer 
was  gratefully  accepted,  and  Pater  used  to  describe  the 


Walter  Pater  249 


thrill  of  gratification,  and,  still  more,  of  astonishment, 
which  he  experienced  when  Jowett  said  to  him  one 
day,  as  he  was  taking  his  leave :  "  I  think  you  have  a 
mind  that  will  come  to  great  eminence."  Unhappily, 
some  years  after  there  was  a  complete  estrangement 
of  sympathy  between  Jowett  and  Pater.  But  it  is 
pleasant  to  record  that,  in  the  last  year  of  the  life  of 
each,  it  was  removed,  and  that  Jowett  was  among  those 
who  congratulated  Pater  most  cordially  on  his  Plato 
and  Platonism. 

In  1862 — his  degree  had  been  a  disappointment — 
Pater,  now  three-and-twenty,  took  rooms  in  the  High 
Street,  Oxford,  and  read  with  private  pupils.  Of 
these  Mr.  T.  H.  S.  Escott  has  told  us  in  his  pleasant 
reminiscences  of  Oxford  that  he  was  one.  Another 
pupil,  of  somewhat  later  date,  was  Mr.  Charles  Lancelot 
Shadwell,  now  Fellow  of  Oriel,  destined  to  become  the 
most  intimate  of  all  Pater's  friends,  and  now  the  guar- 
dian and  editor  of  his  papers.  But  still  no  definite  aim 
seemed  to  have  revealed  itself  to  the  future  critic  ;  he 
was  reading  and  meditating  deeply,  but  he  had  as  yet 
no  call  to  create.  Time  went  by  ;  in  1864  Pater  was 
elected  a  Fellow  of  Brasenose  College,  and  went  into 
residence  there.  With  this  change  in  his  material 
existence,  a  change  came  over  his  mind.  His  sympathies 
grew  wider  and  more  human,  he  became  more  of  a 
student  of  poetry,  he  formed  more  friendships,  and  was 
more  assiduous  in  their  cultivation.  Of  his  earliest 
efforts  after  literar}'  expression,  all,  it  is  believed,  were 
destroyed  by  himself,  with  the  solitary  exception  of  the 


250  Critical  Kit-Kats 

little  study  of  a  pure  and  brilliant  spirit  of  youth,  called 
"  Diaphaneite,"  of  which  the  MS.,  dated  July  1864,  was 
found  after  his  death  and  published  by  Mr.  Shad  well  in 
the  Miscellaneous  Studies  of  1895.  At  last,  in  1866,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-seven,  he  ventured  to  v/rite  and  to 
print  a  little  essay,  a  note  or  fragment,  on  Coleridge. 
We  may  read  this  first  expression  of  a  new  writer  to- 
day in  the  Appreciations.  We  shall  find  little  of  the 
peculiar  charm  of  the  mature  Pater.  His  interest  is 
solely  in  Coleridge,  the  metaphysician,  the  critic  of 
thought ;  that  this  same  philosopher  was  an  exquisite 
poet  has  not  occurred  to  him,  he  positively  forgets  to 
mention  the  fact.  As  far  as  style  is  concerned,  the  little 
essay  is  correct  and  cold,  without  oddity,  but  with  little 
trace  of  the  harmonious  felicity  which  was  about  to 
develop. 

Vast  is  the  change  when  we  meet  Walter  Pater  next. 
He  had  come  from  school  with  a  tendency  to  value  all 
things  German.  The  teaching  of  Jowett  and  of  T.  H. 
Green  tended  to  strengthen  this  habit,  but  Mr.  Capes 
warned  him  against  its  excess,  and  endeavoured,  at  first 
with  but  little  success,  to  attract  him  to  the  lucidity  and 
gaiety  of  French  literature.  Pater's  studies  in  philo- 
sophy now  naturally  brought  him  to  Goethe,  so  massive 
an  influence  in  the  Oxford  of  that  day,  and  the  teaching 
of  Goethe  laid  a  deep  impress  upon  his  temperament, 
upon  his  whole  outlook  on  the  intellectual  life.  It  was 
natural  that  one  so  delicately  sensitive  to  the  external 
symbol  as  was  Pater  should  be  prepared  by  the  com- 
panionship of  Goethe  for  the  influence  of  a  man  who  was 


Walter  Pater 


Goethe's  master  in  this  one  direction,  and  it  was  to  a 
spirit  inflammable  in  the  highest  degree  that  in  1866 
was  laid  the  torch  of  Otto  Jahn's  Life  of  Winckelmann, 
the  Biographische  Aufsatze.  There  was  everything  in 
the  character  and  career  of  the  great  German  restorer 
of  Hellenic  feeling  to  fascinate  Pater,  who  seemed, 
through  Ruskin,  Goethe  and  Hegel,  to  have  travelled  to 
his  true  prototype,  to  the  one  personality  among  the 
dead  which  was  completely  in  sympathy  with  his  own. 
Pater,  too,  among  the  sandhills  of  a  spiritual  Branden- 
burg, had  held  out  arms  of  longing  towards  ideal  beauty, 
revealed  in  physical  or  sensuous  forms,  yet  inspired  and 
interpenetrated  with  harmonious  thought.  The  troubled 
feverish  vision,  the  variegated  and  indeed  over-decorated 
aesthetic  of  Ruskin,  had  become  wearisome  to  Pater — 
not  simple  enough  nor  sensuous  enough.  Winckelmann 
was  the  master  he  wanted,  who  could  "  finger  those 
pagan  marbles  with  unsinged  hands,  with  no  sense  of 
shame  or  loss,"  who  could  live  serenely  "  in  a  world  of 
exquisite  but  abstract  and  colourless  form  ;  "  and  it  was 
with  the  study  of  Winckelmann  that  he  became  himself 
a  writer. 

His  famous  essay  on  "Winckelmann  "  was  the  result 
of  this  new  enthusiasm.  It  was  published  in  the 
Westminster  Review  for  January  1867,  the  author  being 
now  in  his  twenty-eighth  year.  From  this  time  Pater's 
advance,  though  slow,  was  unbroken.  Mr.  John  Morley 
having,  in  1867,  taken  the  editorship  of  the  Fortnightly 
Reviciv,  called  around  him  immediately  a  group  of  the 
most  brilliant  young  men  of  the  day.    Walter  Pater  was 


252  Critical  Kit-Kats 

in  no  undue  haste  to  respond  to  the  appeal.  In  1868, 
inventing  a  name  which  has  since  sunken  into  disrepute 
and  even  ridicule,  he  wrote  an  essay  on  "  ^Esthetic 
Poetry,"  in  which  the  early  work  of  Mr.  William  Morris 
received  prompt  and  judicious  analysis.  Then  followed 
the  series  which  are  still  so  potent  in  their  peculiar 
charm,  the  magnificent  and  most  characteristic  **  Notes 
on  Lionardo  de  Vinci,"  in  November  1869;  the  "Frag- 
ment on  Sandro  Botticelli"  in  August  1 870;  the  "Pico 
della  Mirandula"  in  October,  and  the  "Michelangelo" 
in  November  1871.  In  1873  most  of  these,  and  others, 
were  published  together  in  the  memorable  volume 
originally  entitled  Studies  in  the  History  of  the  Re- 
naissance. 

At  this  point  he  became  partly  famous.  We  may 
look  back  over  the  years  which  followed  his  fellowship, 
and  see  that,  with  the  accession  of  humanistic  ideas, 
he  had  gradually  lost  all  belief  in  the  Christian  religion. 
This  was  the  point,  in  his  whole  career,  at  which  he 
was  furthest  from  the  Anglican  faith.  His  intention, 
on  relinquishing  the  idea  of  entering  the  Church  of 
England,  had  been  to  become  a  Unitarian  minister. 
This  also  he  had  abandoned  by  1864.  But  that  Pater's 
interest  in  ecclesiastical  matters  was  never  really  dead, 
and  that  it  soon  began  to  revive,  is  proved  by  an 
anecdote  with  which  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough 
obliges  me.  He  remembers  dining  with  him  in  1873, 
in  company  with  Bonamy  Price.  Conversation  turned 
on  ecclesiastical  matters,  and  Pater  passed  on  to  a 
dreamy  monologue  about  the  beauty  of  the  ReservecJ 


Walter  Pater  253 


Sacrament  in  Roman  churches,  which  "  gave  them  all 
the  sentiment  of  a  house  where  lay  a  dead  friend." 
This  immediately  aroused  the  Protestantism  of  Bonamy 
Price,  and  a  theological  discussion  ensued  which  waxed 
so  warm  that  Dr.  Creighton  had  to  suggest  a  retreat  to 
the  drawing-room.  When  he  came  up  for  election  at 
Brasenose  it  was  as  a  non-clerical  fellow — I  think  the 
first  who  ever  was  appointed  there — that  Pater  took 
his  place  in  the  society.  In  the  next  year,  in  company 
with  Mr.  Shadwell,  he  paid  his  first  visit  to  Italy,  and 
at  Ravenna,  Pisa,  Florence,  formed  those  impressions 
of  the  art  of  the  Renaissance  which  were  so  power- 
fully to  colour  all  his  own  future  work  as  an  artist.  In 
1858,  when  he  came  to  Oxford,  his  sisters  had  migrated 
to  Heidelberg,  and  here  it  was  his  custom  to  spend  the 
long  vacation,  making  no  friends  among  the  Germans, 
however,  and  never,  in  all  those  years,  troubling  him- 
self to  learn  to  speak  their  language. 


The  costume  of  Walter  Pater  had  been  the  ordinary 
academic  dress  of  the  don  of  the  period,  but  in  May 
1869  he  flashed  forth  at  the  Private  View  of  the  Royal 
Academy  in  a  new  top  hat  and  a  silk  tie  of  brilliant 
apple-green.  This  little  transformation  marked  a  crisis ; 
he  was  henceforth  no  longer  a  provincial  philosopher, 
but  a  critic  linked  to  London  and  the  modern  arts. 
Where  he  touched  the  latter  was  through  the  Pre- 
raphaelites,  especially  through  the  extreme  admiration 


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he  had  conceived  for  the  works  of  Mr.  Burne-Jones, 
then  much  talked  about,  but  rarely  seen.  At  no  time, 
I  think,  had  he  much  personal  knowledge  either  of  that 
painter  or  of  Rossetti.  With  Mr.  Swinburne  he  became 
about  that  date  more  intimate.  The  poet  was  a  not 
unfrequent  visitor  in  those  years  to  Pater's  college 
rooms.  To  all  young  Oxford,  then,  the  name  of  Mr. 
Swinburne  was  an  enchantment,  and  there  used  to  be 
envious  traditions  of  an  upper  window  in  Brasenose 
Lane  thrown  open  to  the  summer  night,  and,  weihng 
forth  from  it,  a  music  of  verse  which  first  outsang  and 
then  silenced  the  nightingales,  protracting  its  harmonies 
until  it  disconcerted  the  lark  himself  at  sunrise. 

After  this,  it  is  a  notable  instance  of  the  art  of  sinking 
to  record  that  I  first  set  eyes  on  Pater  in  1 871,  as  he 
and  Mr.  Swinburne  were  dismounting  from  a  hansom 
cab  at  Gabriel  Rossetti's  door  in  Cheyne  Walk.  Almost 
unknown  to  the  world,  he  was  already  an  object  of 
respect  to  me  as  the  author  of  those  "  Notes  on 
Lionardo,"  which  had  seemed  to  give  a  new  aspect  to 
the  whole  conception  of  ItaHan  art.  In  1872  I  was 
presented  to  him  in  the  studio  of  William  Bell  Scott : 
it  was  not  until  the  early  months  of  1874  that  I  first 
began  to  visit  him  at  Oxford,  and  so  opened  a  friend 
ship  which  was  never  clouded  for  a  moment  in  the 
course  of  more  than  twenty  years.  From  this  point, 
then,  although  my  opportunities  of  seeing  Pater, 
especially  in  Oxford,  were  but  occasional,  I  can  record 
something  from  personal  knowledge. 

In    1869,   removing  from   Brasenose   many  of   the 


Walter  Pater  255 


pretty  objects  and  bric-d-brac  with  which  he  had  been 
the  first  man  in  Oxford  to  decorate  college  rooms, 
Pater  furnished  a  Httle  house  in  Norham  Gardens, 
No.  2  Bradmore  Road,  his  sisters  returning  from 
Heidelberg  to  keep  house  for  him.  Once  settled  here, 
Pater  blossomed  out  into  considerable  sociability,  en- 
tertaining and  being  entertained  in  the  cordial  Oxford 
way.  He  had  now  a  large  circle  of  pleasant  acquaint- 
ances ;  I  cannot  remember  that  he  had  many  intimate 
friends.  Besides  those  whom  I  have  mentioned  already, 
I  can  but  recall  Mark  Pattison,  Dr.  Mandell  Creighton 
(now  Bishop  of  Peterborough),  and  Miss  Mary  Arnold, 
soon  to  marry  an  accomplished  3'oung  member  of 
Pater's  own  college,  Mr.  Humphry  Ward.  To  these 
he  would  doubtless  talk,  to  each  in  a  different  way,  of 
the  interests  most  deeply  rooted  in  his  heart,  "  of 
charm,  and  lucid  order,  and  labour  of  the  file,"  and  to 
a  very  few  London  friends  also.  The  rest  of  the 
world  found  him  affable  and  acquiescent,  already  in 
those  remote  days  displaying  a  little  of  that  Renan 
manner  which  later  on  became  emphasised,  a  manner 
which  trifled  gracefully  and  somewhat  mysteriously  with 
a  companion  not  entirely  in  sympathy. 

Pater's  relation  to  the  Rector  of  Lincoln  was  amus- 
ing. It  was  at  once  confiding  and  suspicious.  "  Patti- 
son is  charming,"  he  used  to  murmur,  "  when  he's 
good.  Shall  we  go  over  and  see  if  he  is  good  this 
afternoon  ?  "  But  he  was  worried  b}'  a  certain  wilful- 
ness in  the  Rector ;  he  could  prove  to  be  so  far  from 
good,    so   absolutely   naughty.      I   remember   on   one 


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occasion — I  think  in  the  autumn  of  1875 — when  the 
Rector,  on  a  visit  at  Bradmore  Road,  had  been 
dehcious  :  he  had  talked,  in  his  most  distinguished 
way,  on  a  dozen  rare  and  exquisite  topics.  He  left, 
begging  Pater  to  come  to  him  next  day,  and  kindly 
extending  the  invitation  to  me.  Accordingly  we  went, 
but  the  charm  was  broken.  A  frivolous  demon  had 
entered  into  the  Rector ;  he  talked  of  croquet  and  of 
petticoats.  We  went  back,  sad  and  silent,  to  Bradmore 
Road,  and,  just  as  we  reached  home.  Pater  said,  with 
solemn  firmness,  **  What  Pattison  likes  best  in  the 
world,  no  doubt,  is  romping  with  great  girls  in  the 
gooseberry-bushes  1  " 

The  vacations  in  these  years  were  very  pleasant  to 
Pater ;  they  were  almost  always  spent  abroad — in 
France,  in  the  company  of  his  sisters.  He  would  walk 
as  much  as  possible,  scouring  a  neighbourhood  for 
architectural  features,  and  preserving  those  impressions 
of  travel,  which  most  of  us  lament  to  find  so  fugitive, 
with  astonishing  exactitude.  He  was  no  linguist,  and 
French  was  the  only  language  in  which  he  could  even 
make  his  wants  understood.  Although  so  much  in 
Germany  in  his  youth,  he  could  speak  no  German. 
When  he  was  travelling  he  always  left  a  place,  if  any 
one  sta3^ing  in  the  hotel  spoke  to  him.  He  had  no  wish 
to  be  competent  in  modern  languages ;  he  used  to  say  : 
*'  Between  you  and  me  and  the  post,  I  hate  a  foreigner," 
and  when  exotic  persons  of  distinction  threatened  to 
visit  Brasenose,  Pater  used  to  disappear  until  he  was 
sure   that   they   had   gone.     He   loved    the    North  of 


Walter   Pater  257 


France  extremely,  and  knew  it  well, 
planning  a  series  of  studies  on  the  great  ecclesiastical 
towns  of  France,  yet  wrote  no  more  than  a  couple  of 
these — on  Amiens  and  on  Vezelay.  So  eagerly  did  he 
prosecute  these  holiday  tours,  that  he  habitually  over- 
walked  himself,  thus  losing  much  of  the  benefit  which 
he  might  otherwise  have  gained  from  the  only  form  of 
exercise  he  ever  indulged  in.  I  note,  in  a  letter  of 
1877,  describing  a  visit  to  Azay-le-Rideau,  this  charac- 
teristic sentence  :  "  We  find  always  great  pleasure  in 
adding  to  our  experiences  of  these  French  places,  and 
return  always  a  little  tired  indeed,  but  with  our  minds 
pleasantly  full  of  memories  of  stained  glass,  old 
tapestries,  and  new  wild  flowers."  These  excursions 
rarely  extended  further  than  the  centre  of  France,  but 
once,  I  think  in  1882,  Pater  went  alone  to  Rome,  and 
spent  the  winter  vacation  there.  He  could  ill  endure 
exciting  travel,  or  too  rapid  hurrying  from  one  impres- 
sive place  to  another.  His  eye  absorbed  so  slowly, 
and  his  memory  retained  what  he  saw  so  completely, 
that  to  be  shown  too  much  was  almost  physical  pain  to 
him,  and  yet  he  was  always  inflicting  it  upon  himself. 

Some  time  after  I  knew  him  first,  that  entertaining 
skit,  The  New  Republic,  was  produced,  and  achieved 
great  popular  success.  Pater  had  his  niche  in  this 
gallery  of  caricatures,  under  the  title  of  Mr.  Rose.  It 
has  been  represented  that  he  suffered  violent  distress 
from  this  parody  of  his  style  and  manner,  that  it  caused 
him  to  retire  from  society  ami  to  abandon  the  prosecu- 
tion  of  literature.      Nothing   in   the  world   could    be 

R 


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further  from  the  truth.  He  thought  the  portrait  a 
little  unscrupulous,  and  he  was  discomposed  by  the 
freedom  of  some  of  its  details.  But  he  admired  the 
cleverness  and  promise  of  the  book,  and  it  did  not 
cause  him  to  alter  his  mode  of  Hfe  or  thought  in  the 
smallest  degree.  He  was  even  flattered,  for  he  was  an 
author  much  younger  and  more  obscure  than  most  ot 
those  who  were  satirised,  and  he  was  sensible  that  tp 
be  thus  distinguished  was  a  compliment.  What  he 
liked  less,  what  did  really  rufQe  him,  was  the  persistence 
with  which  the  newspapers  at  this  time  began  to  attri- 
bute to  him  all  sorts  of  **  eesthetic  "  follies  and  extra- 
vagances. He  said  to  me,  in  1876:  "I  wish  they 
wouldn't  call  me  *  a  hedonist ' ;  it  produces  such  a  bad 
effect  on  the  minds  of  people  who  don't  know  Greek." 
And  the  direct  result  of  all  these  journalistic  mosquito- 
bites  was  the  suppression  of  the  famous  *'  Conclusion  " 
in  the  second  (1877)  edition  of  his  Renaissance. 

The  source  of  his  very  long  silence — for  twelve  years 
divided  his  second  book  from  his  first — I  hardly  know, 
unless  it  be  attributed  to  the  painful  slowness  of  his 
methods  of  composition,  and  his  extreme  solicitude  for 
perfection  of  style.  At  last,  in  February,  1885,  was 
published  his  romance  of  Marius  the  Epicurean,  the 
work  by  which,  I  believe.  Pater  will  pre-eminently  be 
known  to  posterity.  In  the  meantime  had  appeared,  in 
the  Fortnightly  Review  for  1876,  several  of  those  Greek 
studies,  on  Demeter  and  Persephone,  on  the  Marbles 
of  ^gma  and  the  like,  which  Mr.  Shadwell  collected 
in  a  posthumous  volume  in    1895  ;  The  Child  in  the 


Walter  Pater  259 


House,  too,  in  its  earliest  form,  belongs  to  1878,  though 
first  published  as  a  book  in  the  summer  of  1894. 
The  success  of  Marius  was  as  great  as  that  of  a 
book  so  grave  and  strenuous  could  be.  In  1SS7  Pater 
followed  it  by  a  series  of  four  Imaguiary  Portraits, 
studies  in  philosophic  fiction,  one  of  which,  "  Denys 
I'Auxerrois,"  displays  the  peculiarities  of  his  style  with 
more  concentrated  splendour  than  any  other  of  his 
writings.  In  18S9  he  collected  some  of  his  miscellaneous 
critical  studies  into  a  volume  called  Appreciations,  with 
an  Essay  on  Style.  In  1893  he  published  his  highly 
finished  college  lectures  on  Plato  and  Platonism  in  a 
volume  of  rare  dignity  and  humanistic  beauty.  Finally, 
in  the  early  summer  of  1894,  The  Child  in  the  House 
was  issued  from  the  Oxford  Press  of  Mr.  Daniel,  as  a 
precious  toy  for  bibliomaniacs.  This  list  of  publica- 
tions practically  resumes  the  events  in  Pater's  life 
through  twenty  years. 

During  that  period  the  household  was  moved  once, 
in  1886,  to  Kensington,  and  again,  in  1893,  back  to 
Oxford,  where  he  fitted  up  a  house  in  St.  Giles.  But, 
all  the  while.  Pater's  real  home  was  in  his  rooms  at 
Brasenose,  where  he  passed  a  quiet,  cloistered,  and 
laborious  existence,  divided  between  his  college  duties 
and  his  books.  His  later  years  were  comforted  by  a 
great  deal  of  consideration  and  affection  from  those 
around  him  ;  noiseless,  as  he  was,  and^in^  a  sense 
unexhilarating,  he  became  increasingly  an  object  of 
respectful  admiration  to  young  Oxford  men,  whom,  on 
his  part,  he  treated  with  the  most  courteous  indulgence. 


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Of  this  generation,  one  disciple  came  to  proffer  a  tribute 
of  hero-worship,  and  remained  to  become  an  intimate 
friend  ;  this  was  the  Rev,  F.  W.  Bussell,  now  Fellow  of 
Brasenose,  whose  tender  solicitude  did  much  to  render 
the  latest  of  Pater's  years  agreeable  to  him.  Pater 
acted  for  some  time  as  dean  and  tutor  of  his  college, 
entering  assiduously  into  the  councils  and  discipline  of 
the  society,  but  he  never  accepted,  if  indeed  it  were 
ever  offered,  any  university  office.  He  shrank  from 
all  multiplication  of  responsibility,  from  anything  which 
should  break  in  upon  the  sequestered  and  austere 
simplicity  of  his  life.  As  time  went  on,  a  great  change 
came  over  his  relation  to  religious  matters.  When  I 
had  known  him  first  he  was  a  pagan,  without  any  guide 
but  that  of. the  personal  conscience;  years  brought 
gradually  with  them  a  greater  and  greater  longing  for 
the  supporting  solace  of  a  creed.  His  talk,  his  habits, 
became  more  and  more  theological,  and  it  is  my  private 
conviction  that,  had  he  lived  a  few  years  longer,  he 
would  have  endeavoured  to  take  orders  and  a  small 
college  living  in  the  country. 

Report,  which  found  so  much  to  misrepresent  in  a 
life  so  orderly  and  simple,  has  erred  even  as  to  the 
place  and  occasion  of  his  death.  He  was  taken  ill  with 
rheumatic  fever  in  the  month  of  June  1894,  being, 
as  he  remained  to  the  end,  not  in  college,  but  with  his 
sisters  in  their  house  in  St.  Giles.  He  was  recovering, 
and  was  well  enough  to  be  busy  upon  a  study  on 
Pascal,  which  he  has  left  nearly  completed,  when,  in 
consequence  of  writing  too  close  to  an  open  window, 


Walter  Pater  261 


pleurisy  set  in  and  greatly  reduced  his  strength, 
Again  he  seemed  convalescent,  and  had  left  his  room, 
without  ill-effect,  on  July  29,  when,  repeating  the  ex- 
periment next  day,  the  action  of  the  heart  failed,  and 
he  died,  on  the  staircase  of  his  house,  in  the  arms  of 
his  sister,  at  ten  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  Monday, 
July  30,  1894.  Had  he  lived  five  days  longer,  he 
would  have  completed  his  fifty-fifth  year.  He  was 
buried,  in  the  presence  of  many  of  his  oldest  friends, 
in  the  beautiful  cemetery  of  St.  Giles  at  Oxford. 


When  Pater  was  first  seized  with  an  ambition  to 
write,  the  individuals  of  his  own  age  with  whom  he 
came  into  competition  were  mainly  poets.  Those  were 
the  early  days  of  Gabriel  and  Christina  Rossetti,  of 
Morris,  of  Swinburne ;  and  most  of  the  still  younger 
men  made  their  first  steps  in  the  field  of  verse,  how- 
ever far  they  might  afterwards  diverge  from  it.  Pater, 
in  this  nest  of  singing-birds,  resolved  to  be  in  prose  no 
less  painstaking,  no  less  elaborate,  no  less  bound  by 
rule  and  art  than  the  poets  were.  He  is  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  those  who  had  so  much  to  say  that 
their  speech  was  forced  out  of  them  in  a  torrent,  nor 
less  from  those  whose  instinct  led  them  to  bubble 
forth  in  periods  of  a  natural  artless  grace.  If  we  take 
these  symbols  of  a  mountain-stream  or  of  a  fountain 
for  other  prose-writers  who  have  won  the  ear  of  the 
public  with  little  effort,  then  for  Pater  the  appropriate 


262  Critical  Kit-Kats 

image  seems  the  artesian  well,  to  reach  the  contents  of 
of  which,  strata  of  impermeable  clay  must  be  laboriously 
bored.  It  was  not  that  there  was  any  lack  of  material 
there,  nor  any  doubt  about  the  form  it  must  take  when 
it  emerged,  but  that  it  was  so  miraculously  deep  down 
and  hard  to  reach.  I  have  known  writers  of  every 
degree,  but  never  one  to  whom  the  act  of  composition 
was  such  a  travail  and  an  agony  as  it  was  to  Pater. 

In  his  earlier  years  the  labour  of  lifting  the  sentences 
was  so  terrific  that  any  one  with  less  fortitude  v/ould 
have  entirely  abandoned  the  effort.  I  recollect  the 
writing  of  the  opening  chapters  of  Man'us,  and  the 
stress  that  attended  it — the  intolerable  languor  and 
fatigue,  the  fevers  and  the  cold  fits,  the  grey  hours  of 
lassitude  and  insomnia,  the  toil  as  at  a  deep  petroleum 
well  when  the  oil  refuses  to  flow.  With  practice,  this 
terrific  effort  grew  less.  A  year  or  two  ago  I  was  re- 
minding him  of  those  old  times  of  storm  and  stress,  and 
he  replied,  "  Ah  !  it  is  much  easier  now.  If  I  live  long 
enough,  no  doubt  I  shall  learn  quite  to  like  writing." 
The  public  saw  the  result  of  the  labour  in  the  smooth 
solidity  of  the  result,  and  could  suppose,  from  the  very 
elaboration,  that  great  pains  had  been  taken.  How 
much  pains,  very  few  indeed  can  have  guessed  I 

It  may  be  of  interest  to  record  the  manner  in  which 
this  most  self-conscious  and  artistic  of  prose-writers 
proceeded.  First  of  all,  another  pretty  fable  must  be 
knocked  on  the  head.  It  has  been  said,  and  repeated, 
that  Pater  composed  his  best  sentences  without  any 
relation  to  a  context,  and  wrote  them  down  on  little 


Walter  Pater  263 


squares  of  paper,  ready  to  stick  them  in  at  appropriate 
and  effective  places.  This  is  nonsense ;  it  is  quite 
true  that  he  used  such  squares  of  paper,  but  it  was  for 
a  very  different  purpose.  He  read  with  a  box  of  these 
squares  beside  him,  jotting  down  on  each,  very  roughly, 
anything  in  his  author  which  struck  his  fancy,  either 
giving  an  entire  quotation,  or  indicating  a  reference,  or 
noting  a  disposition.  He  did  not  begin,  I  think,  any 
serious  critical  work  without  surrounding  himself  by 
dozens  of  these  little  loose  notes.  When  they  were 
not  direct  references  or  citations,  they  were  of  the 
nature  of  a  memorta  tec/mica.     Here  is  an  example  : 

"  Something  about  the  gloomy  Byzantine  archit., 
belfries,  solemn  night  come  in  about  the  birds  attracted 
by  the  Towers." 

Here  is  another  : 

"  ?  did  he  suppose  predestination  to  have  taken  place, 
only  a/ier  the  Fall  ?  " 

These  papers  would  be  placed  about  him,  like  the 
pieces  of  a  puzzle,  and  when  the  right  moment  came 
the  proper  square  would  serve  as  a  monitor  or  as  a 
guide. 

Having  prepared  his  box  of  little  squares,  he  would 
begin  the  labour  of  actual  composition,  and  so  con 
scious  was  he  of  the  modifications  and  additions  which 
would  supervene  that  he  always  wrote  on  ruled  paper, 
leaving  each  alternate  line  blank.  Mr.  Austin  Dobson 
reminds  me  that  Goldsmith  did  the  same.  On  this 
broad  canvas  of  alternate  lines,  then.  Pater  would 
slowly  begin  to  draw  his  composition,  the  cartoon  of 


264  Critical  Kit-Kats 

what  would  in  time  be  a  finished  essay.  In  the  first 
draft  the  phrase  would  be  a  bald  one ;  in  the  blank 
alternate  line  he  would  at  leisure  insert  fi-esh  descriptive 
or  parenthetical  clauses,  other  adjectives,  more  ex- 
quisitely related  adverbs,  until  the  space  was  filled. 
It  might  then  be  supposed  that  the  MS.  was  complete. 
Far  from  it  1  Cancelling  sheet  by  sheet,  Pater  then 
began  to  copy  out  the  whole — as  before,  on  alternate 
lines  of  copy-book  pages  ;  this  revise  was  treated  in 
the  same  way — corrected,  enlarged,  interleaved,  as  it 
were,  with  minuter  shades  of  feeling  and  more  elaborate 
apparatus  of  parenthesis. 

No  wonder  that  certain  disadvantages  were  attendant 
upon  the  excessive  finish  of  such  a  style.  It  is  not 
possible  to  work  in  this  way,  with  a  cold  hammer,  and 
yet  to  avoid  a  certain  deadness  and  slipperiness  of 
surface.  Pater's  periods,  in  attaining  their  long-drawn 
harmony  and  fulness,  were  apt  to  lose  vigour.  Their 
polish  did  not  quite  make  up  for  their  languor,  for  the 
faintness  and  softness  which  attended  their  slow 
manipulation.  Verse  will  bear  an  almost  endless  labour 
of  the  file ;  prose,  as  the  freer  and  more  spontaneous 
form,  is  less  happy  in  subjection  to  it.  "  What  long 
sentences  Plato  writes  !  "  Pater  says  in  his  Platonism^ 
and  no  doubt  Plato  might  return  the  compliment. 
The  sentences  of  the  Oxford  critic  are  often  too  long, 
and  they  are  sometimes  broken-backed  with  havimg 
had  to  bear  too  heavy  a  burden  of  allusion  and  illustra- 
tion. His  style,  however,  was  his  peculiarity.  It 
had  beautiful  qualities,  if  we  have  to  confess  that  it 


Walter  Pater  265 


had  the  faults  of  those  quaUties.  It  was  highly  indivi- 
dual ;  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  owed  it  to  any  other 
writer,  or  that  at  any  period  of  his  thirty  years  of 
literary  labour  he  faltered  or  swerved  from  his  own 
path.  He  was  to  a  high  degree  self-centred.  Pater 
did  not  study  his  contemporaries  ;  a  year  or  two  ago, 
he  told  me  that  he  had  read  scarcely  a  chapter  of  Mr. 
Stevenson  and  not  a  line  of  Mr.  Kipling.  "  I  feel,  from 
what  I  hear  about  them,"  he  said,  "  that  they  are 
strong ;  they  might  lead  me  out  of  my  path.  1  want 
to  go  on  writing  in  my  own  way,  good  or  bad.  I 
should  be  afraid  to  read  Kipling,  lest  he  should  come 
between  me  and  my  page  next  time  I  sat  down  to 
write."  It  was  the  excess  of  a  very  native  and 
genuine  modesty.  He,  too,  was  strong,  had  he  but 
known  it,  strong  enough  to  have  resisted  the  magnets 
of  contemporary  style.  Perhaps  his  own  writing 
might  have  grown  a  little  simpler  and  a  little  more 
supple  if  he  had  had  the  fortitude  to  come  down  and 
fight  among  his  fellows. 

IV 

Walter  Pater  was  another  of  those  discreet  spirits 
who,  like  Gray,  "  never  speak  out."  He  was  cautious, 
reserved,  and  shy  in  his  relations  even  with  his 
friends;  he  seemed  to  possess  no  medium  through 
which  to  approach  them  very  closely.  An  extremely 
affectionate  dispobition  took  the  place  of  expansiveness, 
and  the  young  people  who  in  later  years  gathered 
around  hiiu  uiii^.ook  liie  one  ior  the  other.    Each  found 


266  Critical  Kit-Kats 

in  Pater  what  he  brought ;  each  saw  in  that  patient, 
courteous,  indulgent  mirror  a  pleasant  reflection  of 
himself.  The  inaccessibility  of  Pater  is  another  of 
those  fables  which  have  to  be  destroyed ;  no  one  was 
less  a  hermit,  no  one  was  more  easily  amused  or 
better  pleased  to  bid  a  congenial  companion  welcome. 
He  was  an  assiduous  host,  a  gracious  listener;  but  who 
could  tell  what  was  passing  behind  those  half-shut, 
dark-grey  eyes,  that  courteous  and  gentle  mask  ?  He 
liked  the  human  race,  one  is  inclined  to  say,  liked  its 
noise  and  neighbourhood,  if  it  were  neither  too  loud  nor 
too  near,  but  his  faith  in  it  was  never  positive,  nor 
would  he  trust  it  to  read  his  secret  thoughts, 

I  have  already  suggested  his  likeness  to  Renan  in 
the  attitude  of  his  mind.  The  great  Frenchman  has 
described,  in  his  autobiography,  the  tendency  which 
led  him  to  refrain  from  opposition  and  argument,  and 
to  bow  the  head  in  the  conversational  house  of 
Rimmon.  Walter  Pater  had  these  concessions,  mere 
escapes  of  the  soul  from  undue  pressure,  and  he  had, 
too,  quite  unconsciously,  some  of  the  very  tricks  of 
speech  of  Renan — especially  the  "no  doubt"  that 
answered  to  the  Frenchman's  incessant  "  n'en  doutez 
pas."  With  natures  like  his,  in  which  the  tide  of 
physical  spirits  runs  low,  in  which  the  vitality  is  luke- 
warm, the  first  idea  in  the  presence  of  anything  too 
vivacious  is  retreat,  and  the  most  obvious  form  of 
social  retreat  is  what  we  call  "  affectation."  It  is  not 
to  be  denied  that,  in  the  old  days.  Pater,  startled  by 
strangers,  was  apt  to  seem  affected  :  he  retreated   as 


Walter  Pater  267 


into  a  fortress,  and  enclosed  himself  in  a  sort  of  solemn 
effeminacy.  It  was,  at  its  worst,  mild  in  comparison 
with  what  the  masters  of  preposterous  behaviour  have 
since  accustomed  us  to,  but  it  reminded  one  too  much 
of  Mr.  Rose.  It  was  put  on  entirely  for  the  benefit  of 
strangers,  and  to  his  inner  circle  of  friends  it  seemed 
like  a  joke.  Perhaps  in  some  measure  it  was  a  joke  ; 
no  one  could  ever  quite  tell  whether  Pater's  strange 
rictus  was  closer  to  laughter  or  to  tears. 

A  nature  so  enclosed  as  his,  so  little  capable  of 
opening  its  doors  to  others,  must  have  some  outlet  of 
relief  Pater  found  his  outlet  in  a  sort  of  delicate, 
secret  playfulness.  There  are  anim.als  which  sit 
all  day  immovable  and  humped  up  among  the  riot 
of  their  fellows,  and  which,  when  all  the  rest  of  the 
menagerie  is  asleep,  steal  out  upon  their  slip  of  green- 
sward and  play  the  wildest  pranks  in  the  light  of  the 
moon.  Pater  has  often  reminded  me  of  some  such 
armadillo  or  wombat.  That  childishness  which  is  the 
sign-manual  of  genius  used  to  come  out  in  the  oddest 
way  when  he  was  perfectly  at  home.  Those  who  think 
of  him  as  a  solemn  pundit  of  aesthetics  may  be  amazed 
to  know  that  he  delighted  in  very  simple  and  farcical 
spectacles  and  in  the  broadest  of  humour.  His  favourite 
among  modern  plaj^wrights  was  Mr.  Pinero,  and  I  shall 
never  forget  going  with  him  to  see  The  Magistrate, 
when  that  piece  was  originally  produced.  Not  a 
schoolboy  in  the  house  was  more  convulsed  with 
laughter,  more  enchanted  at  the  romping  "  business  " 
of  the  play,  than  the  author  of  Mariits.     He  had  the 


268  Critical  Kit-Kats 

gift,  when  I  knew  him  first,  of  inventing  little  farcical 
dialogues,  into  which  he  introduced  his  contemporaries  ; 
in  these  the  Rector  of  Lincoln  generally  figured,  and 
Pater  had  a  rare  art  of  imitating  Pattison's  speech  and 
peevish  intonation.  One  playful  fancy,  persisted  in  so 
long  that  even  close  and  old  friends  were  deceived  by 
it,  was  the  figment  of  a  group  of  relations — Uncle 
Capsicum  and  Uncle  Guava,  Aunt  Fancy  (who  fainted 
when  the  word  "  leg  "  was  mentioned),  and  Aunt  Tart 
(for  whom  no  Acceptable  present  could  ever  be  found). 
These  shadowy  personages  had  been  talked  about  for 
so  many  years  that  at  last,  I  verily  believe,  Pater  had 
almost  persuaded  himself  of  their  existence.  Perhaps 
these  little  touches  will  be  thought  too  trifling  to  be 
mentioned,  but  I  hold  that  they  were  all  a  part  and 
parcel  of  his  complex  and  shrouded  intellectual  life, 
and  therefore  not  to  be  forgotten. 

He  had  great  sweetness  and  uniformity  of  tempei, 
and  almost  the  only  thing  that  ever  ruffled  him  was  a 
reference  to  an  act  of  vandalism  committed  at  Brasenose 
while  he  was  on  the  governing  body.  The  college  had 
a  group,  called  "  Cain  and  Abel,"  cast  in  lead,  a  genuine 
work  by  John  of  Bologna.  For  some  reason  or  other 
this  was  thought  inconvenient,  and  was  sold  for  old 
lead,  a  somewhat  barbarous  proceeding.  Pater,  from 
indolence,  or  else  from  indifference  to  late  Italian  sculp- 
ture, did  not  stir  a  finger  to  prevent  this  desecration,  and 
in  later  years  a  perfectly  unfailing  mode  of  rousing  him 
would  be  to  say,  artlessly,  "  Was  there  not  once  a  group 
by  John  of  Bologna  in  the  college  ?  "    However  sunken 


Walter  Pater  269 


in  reverie,  however  dreamily  detached,  Pater  would  sit 
up  in  a  moment,  and  say,  with  great  acidity,  "  It  was 
totally  devoid  of  merit,  no  doubt." 

Pater  showed  much  tact  and  good  sense  in  his  attitude 
towards  the  college  life.  He  lectured  rarely,  I  believe, 
in  later  years ;  in  the  old  days  he  was  an  assiduous 
tutor.  His  temperament,  it  is  true,  sometimes  made  it 
difficult  to  work  with  him.  On  one  occasion,  at  the 
examination  for  scholarships,  he  undertook  to  look  over 
the  English  essays ;  when  the  examiners  met  to  compare 
marks,  Pater  had  none.  He  explained,  with  languor, 
"  They  did  not  much  impress  me."  As  something  had 
to  be  done,  he  was  asked  to  endeavour  to  recall  such 
impressions  as  he  had  formed  ;  to  stimulate  his  memory, 
the  names  were  read  out  in  alphabetical  order.  Pater 
shook  his  head  mournfully  as  each  was  pronounced, 
murmuring  dreamily,  "  I  do  not  recall  him,"  "  He  did 
not  strike  me,"  and  so  on.  At  last  the  reader  came  to 
the  name  of  Sanctuary,  on  which  Pater's  face  lit  up,  and 
he  said,  "  Yes  ;  I  remember ;  I  liked  his  name." 

My  friend,  Dr.  Henry  Jackson,  gives  me  an  anecdote 
which  illustrates  a  more  practical  side  to  his  character. 
In  1870,  having  just  begun  to  lecture  at  Trinity,  our 
Cambridge  Platonist  found  himself  seated  next  Pater  at 
dinner  in  Brasenose.  He  said  to  him  :  "  I  believe  you 
lecture  constantly  on  The  Republic.  How  do  you  get 
through  it  in  time  ?  It  seems  as  though  lecturing  three 
times  a  week  for  three  terms,  it  would  be  impossible  to 
deal  adequately  within  a  year  with  all  the  problems  and 
the  fallacies."     "  Oh  ! "  said  Pater,  "  I  always  begin  by 


270 


Critical  Kit-Kats 


telling  them  that  Socrates  is  not  such  a  fool  as  he  seems, 
and  we  get  through  nicely  in  two  terms."  He  grew 
more  and  more  inclined  to  take  an  indulgent  view  of  the 
3'oung  people.  A  year  or  two  ago,  I  remember  his  say- 
ing, when  somebody  asked  him  whether  the  horse-pla}' 
of  the  undergraduates  did  not  disturb  him,  "  Oh  !  no  ; 
I  rather  enjoy  it.  They  are  like  playful  young  tigers, 
that  have  been  fed."  He  was  not  a  "progressive"; 
our  friend  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough  recalls  a  serious 
discussion  in  common-room  at  Brasenose,  on  the  burn- 
ing subject  of  university  reform.  Pater  interposed  in 
the  thick  of  the  fra}'  with  the  somewhat  disconcerting 
remark,  "  I  do  not  know  what  your  object  is.  At  present 
the  undergraduate  is  a  child  of  nature  ;  he  grows  up 
like  a  wild  rose  in  a  country  lane ;  you  want  to  turn  him 
into  a  turnip,  rob  him  of  all  grace,  and  plant  him  out  in 
rows."  And  his  remark,  concerning  bonfires  in  the  quad, 
that  they  hghted  up  the  spire  of  St.  Mary's  so  beauti- 
fully, will  long  be  remembered. 

The  perennial  conflict  in  his  members,  between  his 
exquisite  instinct  for  corporeal  beauty  on  the  one  hand 
and  his  tendency  to  ecclesiastical  symbol  and  theological 
dogma  on  the  other,  is  the  secret,  I  think,  of  what  made 
the  character  of  Pater  so  difficult  for  others  to  elucidate, 
in  some  measure  also  so  painful  and  confusing  for  him- 
self. He  was  not  all  for  Apollo,  nor  all  for  Christ,  but 
each  deity  swayed  in  him,  and  neither  had  that  perfect 
homage  that  brings  peace  behind  it.  As  Alphonse 
Daudet  says  of  some  thinker,  **  Son  cerveau  etait  une 
cathedrale  ddsaffectee,"  and  when  he  tried,  as  he  bade  us 


Walter  Pater  27: 


try,  "to  burn  always  with  the  hard,  gem-like  flame"  of 
aesthetic  observation,  the  flame  of  another  altar  mingled 
with  the  fire  and  darkened  it.  Not  easily  or  surely 
shall  we  divine  the  workings  of  a  brain  and  a  conscience 
scarcely  less  complex,  less  fantastic,  less  enigmatical, 
than  the  face  of  Mona  Lisa  herself.  Pater,  as  a  human 
being,  illustrated  by  no  letters,  by  no  diaries,  by  no  im- 
pulsive unburdenings  of  himself  to  associates,  will  grow 
more  and  more  shadowy.  But  it  has  seemed  well  to 
preser\^e,  while  still  they  are  attainable,  some  of  the 
external  facts  about  a  writer  whose  polished  and  con- 
centrated work  has  already  become  part  of  the  classic 
literature  of  England,  and  who  will  be  remembered 
among  the  writers  of  this  age  when  all  but  a  few  are 
forgotten. 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson 

PERSONAL  MEMORIES 

IN  setting  down  my  recollections  of  Louis  Stevenson, 
I  desire  to  confine  the  record  to  what  I  have  myself 
known  and  seen.  '  His  writings  will  be  mentioned  only 
in  so  far  as  I  heard  them  planned  and  discussed.  Of 
his  career  and  character  I  shall  not  attempt  to  give  a 
complete  outline  ;  all  I  purpose  to  do  is  to  present  those 
sides  of  them  which  came  under  my  personal  notice. 
The  larger  portrait  it  will  be  his  privilege  to  prepare 
who  was  the  closest  and  the  most  responsible  of  all 
Stevenson's  friends;  and  it  is  Ouly  while  we  wait  for 
Mr.  Sidney  Colvin's  biography  that  these  imperfect 
sketches  can  retain  their  value.  The  most  that  can  be 
hoped  for  them  is  that  they  may  secure  a  niche  in  his 
gallery.  And  now,  pen  in  hand,  I  pause  to  think  how 
I  can  render  in  words  a  faint  impression  of  the  most 
inspiriting,  the  most  fascinating  human  being  that  I 
have  known. 


It  is  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  since  I  first  saw 
Stevenson.  In  the  autumn  of  1870,  in  company  with  a 
former  schooHellow,  I  was  in  the  Hebrides.     We  had 


276  Critical  Kit-Kats 

been  wandering  in  the  Long  Island,  as  they  name  the 
outer  archipelago,  and  our  steamer,  returning,  called  at 
Skye.  At  the  pier  of  Portree,  I  think,  a  company  came  on 
board — "  people  of  importance  in  their  day,"  Edinburgh 
acquaintances,  I  suppose,  who  had  accidentally  met  in 
Skye  on  various  errands.  At  all  events,  they  invaded 
our  modest  vessel  with  a  loud  sound  of  talk.  Professor 
Blackie  was  among  them,  a  famous  figure  that  calls  for 
no  description  ;  and  a  voluble,  shaggy  man,  clad  in 
homespun,  with  spectacles  forward  upon  nose,  who,  it 
was  whispered  to  us,  was  Mr.  Sam  Bough,  the  Scottish 
Academician,  a  water-colour  painter  of  some  repute, 
who  was  to  die  in  1878.  There  were  also  several 
engineers  of  prominence.  At  the  tail  of  this  chatty, 
jesting  little  crowd  of  invaders  came  a  youth  of  about 
my  own  age,  whose  appearance,  for  some  mysterious 
reason,  instantly  attracted  me.  He  was  tall,  preternatur- 
ally  lean,  with  longish  hair,  and  as  restless  and  questing 
as  a  spaniel.  The  party  from  Portree  fairly  took 
possession  of  us ;  at  meals  they  crowded  around  the 
captain,  and  we  common  tourists  sat  silent,  below  the 
salt.  The  stories  of  Blackie  and  Sam  Bough  were 
resonant.  Meanwhile,  I  knew  not  why,  I  watched  the 
plain,  pale  lad  who  took  the  lowest  place  in  this  pri- 
vileged company. 

The  summer  of  1870  remains  in  the  memory  of 
western  Scotland  as  one  of  incomparable  splendour. 
Our  voyage,  especially  as  evening  drew  on,  was  like  an 
emperor's  progress.  We  stayed  on  deck  till  the  latest 
moment  possible,  and  I  occasionally  watched  the  lean 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  277 

youth,  busy  and  serviceable,  with  some  of  the  little 
tricks  with  which  we  were  later  on  to  grow  familiar — 
the  advance  with  hand  on  hip,  the  sidewise  bending  of 
the  head  to  listen.  Meanwhile  darkness  overtook  us, 
a  wonderful  haio  of  moonlight  swam  up  over  Glenelg, 
the  indigo  of  the  peaks  of  the  Cuchullins  faded  into  the 
general  blue  night.  I  went  below,  but  was  presently 
aware  of  some  change  of  course,  and  then  of  an  un- 
expected stoppage.  I  tore  on  deck,  and  found  that  we 
had  left  our  track  among  the  islands,  and  had  steamed 
up  a  narrow  and  unvisited  fiord  of  the  mainland — I 
think  Loch  Nevis.  The  sight  was  curious  and  be- 
wildering. We  lay  in  a  gorge  of  blackness,  with  only 
a  strip  of  the  blue  moonlit  sky  overhead ;  in  the  dark 
a  few  lanterns  jumped  about  the  shore,  carried  by 
agitated  but  unseen  and  soundless  persons.  As  I 
leaned  over  the  bulwarks,  Stevenson  was  at  my  side, 
and  he  explained  to  me  that  we  had  come  up  this  loch 
to  take  away  to  Glasgow  a  large  party  of  emigrants 
driven  from  their  homes  in  the  interests  of  a  deer-forest. 
As  he  spoke,  a  black  mass  became  visible  entering  the 
vessel.  Then,  as  we  slipped  off  shore,  the  fact  of  their 
hopeless  exile  came  home  to  these  poor  fugitives,  and 
suddenly,  through  the  absolute  silence,  there  rose  from 
them  a  wild  kerning  and  wailing,  reverberated  by  the 
cliffs  of  the  loch,  and  at  that  strange  place  and  hour 
infinitely  poignant.  When  I  came  on  deck  next  morn- 
ing, my  unnamed  friend  was  gone.  He  had  put  off  with 
the  engineers  to  visit  some  remote  lighthouse  of  the 
Hebrides. 


278  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Tkis  early  glimpse  of  Stevenson  is  a  delightful 
memory  to  me.  When  we  met  next,  not  only  did  I 
instantly  recall  him,  but,  what  was  stranger,  he  remem- 
bered me.  This  voyage  in  the  Clansman  was  often 
mentioned  between  us,  and  it  has  received  for  me  a 
sort  of  consecration  from  the  fact  that  in  the  very  last 
letter  that  Louis  wrote,  finished  on  the  day  of  his 
death,  he  made  a  reference  to  it. 


In  the  very  touching  "  Recollections "  which  our 
friend  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  has  published,  he  says :  "  I 
shall  not  deny  that  my  first  impression  [of  Stevenson] 
was  not  wholly  favourable."  I  remember,  too,  that 
John  Addington  Symonds  was  not  pleased  at  first.  It 
only  shows  how  different  are  our  moods.  I  must  con- 
fess that  in  my  case  the  invading  army  simply  walked 
up  and  took  the  fort  by  storm.  It  was  in  1877,  or  late 
in  1876,  that  I  was  presented  to  Stevenson,  at  the  old 
Savile  Club,  by  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin,  who  thereupon  left 
us  to  our  devices.  We  went  downstairs  and  lunched 
together,  and  then  we  adjourned  to  the  smoking-room. 
As  twilight  came  on  I  tore  myself  away,  but  Stevenson 
walked  with  me  across  Hyde  Park,  and  nearly  to  my 
house.  He  had  an  engagement,  and  so  had  I,  but  I 
walked  a  mile  or  two  back  with  him.  The  fountains  of 
talk  had  been  unsealed,  and  they  drowned  the  conven- 
tions. I  came  home  dazzled  with  my  new  friend, 
saying,  as  Constance  does  of  Arthur,  "  Was  ever  such 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  279 

a  gracious  creature  born  ?  "  That  impression  of  in- 
effable mental  charm  was  formed  at  the  first  moment  of 
acquaintance,  and  it  never  lessened  or  became  modified. 
Stevenson's  rapidity  in  the  sympathetic  interchange  of 
ideas  w^as,  doubtless,  the  source  of  it.  He  has  been 
described  as  an  "  egotist,"  but  I  challenge  the  descrip- 
tion. If  ever  there  was  an  altruist,  it  was  Louis 
Stevenson ;  he  seemed  to  feign  an  interest  in  himself 
merely  to  stimulate  you  to  be  liberal  in  your  con- 
fidences.* 

Those  who  have  written  about  him  from  later  im- 
pressions than  those  of  which  I  speak  seem  to  me  to 
give  insufficient  prominence  to  the  gaiety  of  Stevenson. 
It  was  his  cardinal  quality  in  those  early  days.  A 
childlike  mirth  leaped  and  danced  in  him ;  he  seemed 
to  skip  upon  the  hills  of  life.  He  was  simply  bubbling 
with  quips  and  jests ;  his  inherent  earnestness  or 
passion  about  abstract  things  was  incessantly  relieved  by 
jocosity;  and  when  he  had  built  one  of  his  intellectual 
castles  in  the  sand,  a  wave  of  humour  was  certain  to 
sweep  in  and  destroy  it.  I  cannot,  for  the  life  of  me, 
recall  any  of  his  jokes  ;  and  written  down  in  cold  blood, 
they  might  not  be  funny  if  I  did.  They  were  not  wit 
so  much  as  humanity,  the  many-sided  outlook  upon 


•  This  continued  to  be  his  characteristic  to  the  last.  Thus  he  described 
an  interview  he  had  in  Sydney  with  some  man  formerly  connected  with  the 
"black-birding"  trade,  by  saying:  "He  was  very  shy  at  first,  and  it  was 
not  till  1  told  him  of  a  good  many  of  my  escapades  that  1  could  get  him  to 
thaw,  and  then  he  poured  it  all  out.  I  have  always  found  that  tlic  best  way 
of  getting  people  to  be  confidential." 


2  8o  Critical  Kit-Kats 

life.  I  am  anxious  that  his  laughter-loving  mood  should 
not  be  forgotten,  because  later  on  it  was  partly,  but  I 
think  never  wholly,  quenched  by  ill  health,  responsi- 
bility, and  the  advance  of  years.  He  was  often,  in  the 
old  days,  excessively  and  delightfully  silly — silly  with 
the  silliness  of  an  inspired  schoolboy ;  and  I  am  afraid 
that  our  laughter  sometimes  sounded  ill  in  the  ears  of 
age. 

A  pathos  was  given  to  his  gaiety  by  the  fragility  of 
his  health.  He  was  never  well,  all  the  years  I  knew 
him ;  and  we  looked  upon  his  life  as  hanging  by  the 
frailest  tenure.  As  he  never  complained  or  maundered, 
this,  no  doubt — though  we  were  not  aware  of  it — added 
to  the  charm  of  his  presence.  He  was  so  bright  and 
keen  and  witty,  and  any  week  he  might  die.  No  one, 
certainly,  conceived  it  possible  that  he  could  reach  his 
forty-fifth  year.  In  1879  his  health  visibly  began  to 
run  lower,  and  he  used  to  bury  himself  in  lonely  Scotch 
and  French  places,  "  tinkering  himself  with  solitude," 
as  he  used  to  say. 

My  experience  of  Stevenson  during  these  first  years 
was  confined  to  London,  upon  which  he  would  make 
sudden  piratical  descents,  staying  a  few  days  or  weeks, 
and  melting  into  air  again.  He  was  much  at  my  house; 
and  it  must  be  told  that  my  wife  and  I,  as  young 
married  people,  had  possessed  ourselves  of  a  house  too 
large  for  our  slender  means  immediately  to  furnish. 
The  one  person  who  thoroughly  approved  of  our  great, 
bare,  absurd  drawing-room  was  Louis,  who  very 
earnestly  dealt  with  us  on  the  immorality  of  chairs  and 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  281 

tables,  and  desired  us  to  sit  always,  as  he  delighted  to 
sit,  upon  hassocks  on  the  floor.  Nevertheless,  as 
arm-chairs  and  settees  straggled  into  existence,  he 
handsomely  consented  to  use  them,  although  never  in 
the  usual  way,  but  with  his  legs  thrown  sidewise  over 
the  arms  of  them,  or  the  head  of  a  sofa  treated  as  a 
perch.  In  particular,  a  certain  shelf,  with  cupboards 
below,  attached  to  a  bookcase,  is  worn  with  the  person 
of  Stevenson,  who  would  spend  half  an  evening  while 
passionately  discussing  some  great  question  of  morality 
on  literature,  leaping  sidewise  in  a  seated  posture  to 
the  length  of  this  shelf,  and  then  back  again.  He  was 
eminently  peripatetic,  too,  and  never  better  company 
than  walking  in  the  street,  this  exercise  seeming  to 
inflame  his  fancy.  But  his  most  habitual  dwelling- 
place  in  the  London  of  those  da3's  was  the  Savile  Club, 
then  lodged  in  an  inconvenient  but  very  friendly  house 
in  Savile  Row.  Louis  pervaded  the  club ;  he  was  its 
most  affable  and  chatty  member ;  and  he  lifted  it,  by 
the  ingenuity  of  his  incessant  dialectic,  to  the  level  of  a 
sort  of  humorous  Academe  or  Mouseion. 

At  this  time  he  must  not  be  thought  of  as  a  success- 
ful author.  A  very  few  of  us  were  convinced  of  his 
genius;  but  with  the  exception  of  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen, 
nobody  of  editorial  status  was  sure  of  it.  I  remember 
the  publication  of  ^«  Inland  Voyage  in  1878,  and  the 
inability  of  the  critics  and  the  public  to  see  anything 
unusual  in  it. 

Stevenson  was  not  without  a  good  deal  of  innocent 
oddity  in  his  dress.     When  I  try  to  conjure  up  his 


282  Critical  Kit-Kats 

figure,  I  can  see  only  a  slight,  lean  lad,  in  a  suit  of  blue 
sea-clo'th,  a  black  shirt,  and  a  wisp  of  yellow  carpet 
that  did  duty  for  a  necktie.  This  was  long  his  attire, 
persevered  in  to  the  anguish  of  his  more  conventional 
acquaintances.  I  have  a  ludicrous  memory  of  going, 
in  1878,  to  buy  him  a  new  hat,  in  company  with  Mr. 
Lang,  the  thing  then  upon  his  head  having  lost  the 
semblance  of  a  human  article  of  dress.  Aided  by  a 
very  civil  shopman,  we  suggested  several  hats  and  caps, 
and  Louis  at  first  seemed  interested ;  but  having  pre- 
sently hit  upon  one  which  appeared  to  us  pleasing  and 
decorous,  we  turned  for  a  moment  to  inquire  the  price. 
We  turned  back,  and  found  that  Louis  had  fled,  the 
idea  of  parting  with  the  shapeless  object  having  proved 
too  painful  to  be  entertained.  By  the  way,  Mr.  Lang 
will  pardon  me  if  I  tell,  in  exacter  detail,  a  story  of 
his.  It  was  immediately  after  the  adventure  with  the 
hat  that,  not  having  quite  enough  money  to  take  him 
from  London  to  Edinburgh,  third  class,  he  proposed  to 
the  railway  clerk  to  throw  in  a  copy  of  Mr.  Swinburne's 
Queen-Mother  mid  Rosamond.  The  offer  was  refused 
with  scorn,  although  the  book  was  of  the  first  edition, 
and  even  then  worth  more  than  the  cost  of  a  whole 
ticket. 

Stevenson's  pity  was  a  very  marked  quality,  and  it 
extended  to  beggars,  which  is,  I  think,  to  go  too  far. 
His  optimism,  however,  suffered  a  rude  shock  in  South 
Audley  Street  one  summer  afternoon.  We  met  a  stal- 
wart beggar,  whom  I  refused  to  aid.  Louis,  however, 
wavered,  and  finally  handed  him  sixpence.     The  maa 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  283 

pocketed  the  coin,  forbore  to  thank  his  benefactor,  but, 
fixing  his  eye  on  me,  said,  in  a  loud  voice,  "  And  what 
is  the  other  little  gentleman  going  to  give  me?"  "  In 
future,"  said  Louis,  as  we  strode  coldly  on,  "  /  shall  be 
*  the  other  little  gentleman.'  " 

In  those  early  days  he  suffered  many  indignities  on 
account  of  his  extreme  youthfulness  of  appearance  and 
absence  of  self-assertion.  He  was  at  Inverness — being 
five  or  six  and  twenty  at  the  time — and  had  taken  a 
room  in  a  hotel.  Coming  back  about  dinner-time,  he 
asked  the  hour  of  table  d'hote,  whereupon  the  landlady 
said,  in  a  motherly  way:  "Oh,  I  knew  you  wouldn't 
like  to  sit  in  there  among  the  grown-up  people,  so  I've 
had  a  place  put  for  you  in  the  bar.""  There  was  a  frolic 
at  the  Royal  Hotel,  Bathgate,  in  the  summer  of  1879. 
Louis  was  lunching  alone,  and  the  maid,  considering 
him  a  negligible  quantity,  came  and  leaned  out  of  the 
window.  This  outrage  on  the  proprieties  was  so  sting- 
ing that  Louis  at  length  made  free  to  ask  her,  with  iron}', 
what  she  was  doing  there.  "  I'm  looking  for  my  lad," 
she  replied.  "Is  that  he?"  asked  Stevenson,  with 
keener  sarcasm.  "  Weel,  I've  been  lookin'  for  him  a' 
my  life,  and  I've  never  seen  him  yet,"  was  the  response. 
Louis  was  disarmed  at  once,  and  wrote  her  on  the  spot 
some  beautiful  verses  in  the  vernacular.  "  They're  no 
bad  for  a  beginner,"  she  was  kind  enough  to  say  when 
she  had  read  them. 

The  year  1879  was  a  dark  one  in  the  life  of  Louis. 
He  had  formed  a  conviction  that  it  was  his  duty  to  go 
out  to  the  extreme  west  of  the  United  States,  while  his 


2^4  Critical  Kit-Kats 

family  and  the  inner  circle  of  his  friends  were  equally 
certain  that  it  was  neither  needful  nor  expedient  that  he 
should  make  this  journey.  As  it  turned  out,  they  were 
wrong,  and  he  was  right ;  but  in  the  circumstances  their 
opinion  seemed  the  only  correct  one.  His  health  was 
particularly  bad,  and  he  was  ordered,  not  West,  but 
South.  The  expedition,  which  he  has  partly  described 
in  The  Amateur  Emigrant  and  Across  the  Plains,  was 
taken,  therefore,  in  violent  opposition  to  all  those  whom 
he  left  in  England  and  Scotland  ;  and  this  accounts  for 
the  mode  in  which  it  was  taken.  He  did  not  choose  to 
ask  for  money  to  be  spent  in  going  to  California,  and  it 
was  hoped  that  the  withdrawal  of  supplies  would  make 
the  voyage  impossible.  But  Louis,  bringing  to  the  front 
a  streak  of  iron  obstinacy  which  lay  hidden  somewhere 
in  hfs  gentle  nature,  scraped  together  enough  to  secure 
him  a  steerage  passage  across  the  Atlantic. 

The  day  before  he  started  he  spent  with  my  wife  and 
me — a  day  of  stormy  agitation,  an  April  day  of  rain- 
clouds  and  sunshine  ;  for  it  was  not  in  Louis  to  remain 
long  in  any  mood.  I  seem  to  see  him  now,  pacing  the 
room,  a  cigarette  spinning  in  his  wasted  fingers.  To  the 
last  we  were  trying  to  dissuade  him  from  what  seemed  to 
us  the  maddest  of  enterprises.  He  was  so  ill  that  I  did 
not  like  to  leave  him,  and  at  night — it  was  midsummer 
weather — we  walked  down  into  town  together.  We 
were  by  this  time,  I  suppose,  in  a  pretty  hysterical  state 
of  mind,  and  a.=  we  went  through  Berkeley  Square,  in 
mournful  discussion  of  the  future,  Louis  suddenly  pro- 
posed  that  we  should  visit   the   so-called    "  Haunted 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  285 

House,"  which  then  occupied  the  newspapers.  The 
square  was  quiet  in  the  decency  of  a  Sunday  evening. 
W^  found  the  house,  and  one  of  us  boldly  knocked  at 
the  door.  There  was  no  answer  and  no  sound,  and  we 
jeered  upon  the  door-step  ;  but  suddenly  we  were  both 
aware  of  a  pale  face — a  phantasm  in  the  dusk — gazing 
down  upon  us  from  a  surprising  height.  It  was  the 
caretaker,  I  suppose,  mounted  upon  a  flight  of  steps : 
but  terror  gripped  us  at  the  heart,  and  we  fled  with  foot- 
steps as  precipitate  as  those  of  schoolboys  caught  in  an 
orchard.  I  think  that  ghostly  face  in  Berkeley  Square 
must  have  been  Louis's  latest  European  impression  for 
many  months. 


All  the  world  now  knows,  through  the  two  books 
which  I  have  named,  what  immediately  happened. 
Presently  letters  began  to  arrive,  and  in  one  from  Mon- 
terey, written  early  in  October  1879,  he  told  me  of 
what  was  probably  the  nearest  approach  of  death  that 
ever  came  until  the  end,  fifteen  years  later.  I  do  not 
think  it  is  generally  known,  even  in  the  inner  circle  of 
his  friends,  that  in  September  of  that  year  he  was 
violently  ill,  alone,  at  an  Angora-goat  ranch  in  the 
Santa  Lucia  Mountains.  "  I  scarcely  slept  or  ate  or 
thought  for  four  days,"  he  said.  "  Two  nights  I  lay 
out  under  a  tree,  in  a  sort  of  stupor,  doing  nothing  but 
fetch  water  for  myself  and  horse,  light  a  fire  and  make 
coffee,  and  all  night  awake  hearing  the  goat-bells  ringing 
and  the  tree-toads  singing,  when  each  new  noise  was 


286  Critical  Kit-Kats 

enough  to  set  me  mad."  Then  an  old  frontiersman,  a 
mighty  hunter  of  bears,  came  round,  and  tenderly 
nursed  him  through  his  attack.  "By  all  rule  this 
should  have  been  my  death  ;  but  after  a  while  my  spirit 
got  up  again  in  a  divine  frenzy,  and  has  since  kicked 
and  spurred  my  vile  body  forward  with  great  emphasis 
and  success." 

Late  in  the  winter  of  1879,  with  renewed  happiness 
and  calm  of  life,  and  also  under  the  spur  of  a  need  of 
money,  he  wrote  with  much  assiduity.  Among  other 
things,  he  composed  at  Monterey  the  earliest  of  his 
novels,  a  book  called  A  Vendetta  in  the  West,  the  manu- 
script of  which  seems  to  have  disappeared.  Perhaps 
we  need  not  regret  it ;  for,  so  he  declared  to  me,  "  It 
was  about  as  bad  as  Ouida,  but  not  quite,  for  it  was 
not  so  eloquent."  He  had  made  a  great  mystery  of  his 
whereabouts ;  indeed,  for  several  months  no  one  was  to 
know  what  had  become  of  him,  and  his  letters  were  to 
be  considered  secret.  At  length,  in  writing  from  Mon- 
terey, on  November  15,  1879,  he  removed  the  embargo  : 
"  That  I  am  in  California  may  now  be  published  to  the 
brethren."  In  the  summer  of  the  next  year,  after  a 
winter  of  very  serious  ill  health,  during  which  more 
than  once  he  seemed  on  the  brink  of  a  galloping  con- 
sumption, he  returned  to  England.  He  had  married  in 
California  a  charming  lady  whom  we  all  soon  learned 
to  regard  as  the  most  appropriate  and  helpful  companion 
that  Louis  could  possibly  have  secured.  On  October  8, 
1880 — a  memorable  day — he  made  his  first  appearance 
in  London  since  his  American  exile.     A  post-card  from 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  287 

Edinburgh  had  summoned  me  to  "appoint  with  an 
appointment "  certain  particular  friends  ;  *'  and  let  us 
once  again,"  Louis  wrote,  "  lunch  together  in  the  Savile 
Halls."  Mr.  Lang  and  Mr.  Walter  Pollock,  and,  I 
think,  Mr.  Henley,  graced  the  occasion,  and  the  club 
cellar  produced  a  bottle  of  Chambertin  of  quite  uncom- 
mon merit.  Louis,  I  may  explain,  had  a  peculiar  pas- 
sion for  Burr^undy,  which  he  esteemed  the  wine  of 
highest  possibilities  in  the  whole  Bacchic  order ;  and  I 
have  often  known  him  descant  on  a  Pommard  or  a 
Montrachet  in  terms  so  exquisite  that  the  listeners 
could  scared}'  taste  the  wine  itself. 

Davos-Platz  was  now  prescribed  for  the  rickety  lungs; 
and  late  in  that  year  Louis  and  his  wife  took  up  their 
abode  there,  at  the  Hotel  Buol,  he  carrying  with  him  a 
note  from  me  recommending  him  to  the  care  of  John 
Addington  Symonds.  Not  at  first,  but  presently  and 
on  the  whole,  these  two  men,  so  singular  in  their  gene- 
ration, so  unique  and  so  unlike,  "  hit  it  off,"  as  people 
sa}',  and  were  an  intellectual  solace  to  each  other ;  but 
their  real  friendship  did  not  begin  till  a  later  year.  I 
remember  Stevenson  saying  to  me  next  spring  that  to 
be  much  with  Symonds  was  to  "  adventure  in  a 
thornwood."  It  was  at  Davos,  this  winter  of  i(S8o,  that 
Stevenson  took  up  the  study  of  Hazlitt,  having  found  a 
publisher  who  was  willing  to  bring  out  a  critical  and 
biographical  memoir.  This  scheme  occupied  a  great 
part  of  Louis's  attention,  but  was  eventually  dropped ; 
for  the  further  he  progressed  in  the  investigation  of 
Hazlitt's  character  the  less  he  liked  it,  and  the  squalid 


288  Critical  Kit-Kats 

Liber  Amoris  gave  the  coup  de  grace.  He  did  not  know 
what  he  would  be  at.  His  vocation  was  not  yet  ap- 
parent to  him.  He  talked  of  writing  on  craniology  and 
the  botany  of  the  Alps.  The  unwritten  books  of 
Stevenson  will  one  day  attract  the  scholiast,  who  will 
endeavour,  perhaps,  to  reconstruct  them  from  the  refer- 
ences to  them  in  his  correspondence.  It  may,  there- 
fore, be  permissible  to  record  here  that  he  was  long 
proposing  to  write  a  life  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  for 
which  he  made  some  considerable  collections.  This  was 
even  advertised  as  "  in  preparation,"  on  several  occa- 
sions, from  1885  until  1887,  but  was  ultimately  aban- 
doned. I  remember  his  telling  me  that  he  intended  to 
give  emphasis  to  the  "  humour  "  of  Wellington. 

In  June,  1881,  we  saw  him  again;  but  he  passed 
very  rapidly  through  London  to  a  cottage  at  Pitlochry 
in  Perthshire.  He  had  lost  his  hold  on  town.  "  Lon- 
don," he  wrote  me,  "  now  chiefly  means  to  me  Colvin 
and  Henley,  Leslie  Stephen  and  you."  He  was  now 
coursing  a  fresh  literary  hare,  and  set  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson,  Mr.  Saintsbury,  and  me  busily  hunting  out 
facts  about  Jean  Cavalier,  the  romantic  eighteenth- 
cen^-ury  adventurer,  whose  life  he  fancied  that  he  would 
write.  His  thoughts  had  recurred,  in  fact,  to  Scottish 
history ;  and  he  suddenly  determined  to  do  what  seemed 
rather  a  mad  thing — namely,  to  stand  for  the  Edin- 
burgh professorship  of  history,  then  just  vacant.  We 
were  all  whipped  up  for  testimonials,  and  a  little  pam- 
phlet exists,  in  a  pearl-grey  cover — the  despair  of 
bibliophiles — in  which  he  and  a  strange  assortment  of 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  289 

his  friends  set  forth  his  claims.  These  required  nimble 
treatment,  since,  to  put  it  plainly,  it  was  impossible  to 
say  that  he  had  any.  His  appeal  was  treated  by  the 
advocates,  who  were  the  electing  body,  with  scant  con- 
sideration, and  some  worthy  gentleman  was  elected. 
The  round  Louis  was  well  out  of  such  a  square  hole  as 
a  chair  in  a  universit3\ 

But  something  better  was  at  hand.  It  was  now,  and 
in  the  peace  of  the  Highlands,  that  Louis  set  our  to 
become  a  popular  writer.  The  fine  art  of  "booming" 
had  not  then  been  introduced,  nor  the  race  of  those 
who  week  by  week  discover  coveys  of  fresh  geniuses. 
Although  Stevenson,  in  a  sporadic  way,  had  written 
much  that  was  delightful,  and  that  will  last,  he  was  yet 
— now  at  the  close  of  his  thirty-first  year — by  no  means 
successful.  The  income  he  made  by  his  pen  was  still 
ridiculously  small ;  and  Mr.  John  Morley,  amazing  as 
it  sounds  to-day,  had  just  refused  to  give  him  a  book  to 
write  in  the  English  Men  of  Letters  series,  on  the  ground 
of  his  obscurity  as  an  author.  All  this  was  to  be  changed, 
and  the  book  that  v/as  to  do  it  was  even  now  upon  the 
stocks.  In  August  the  Stevensons  moved  to  a  house 
in  Braemar — a  place,  as  Louis  said,  "  patronised^  by 
the  royalty  of  the  Sister  Kingdoms — Victoria  and 
the  Cairngorms,  sir,  honouring  that  country-side  by 
their  conjunct  presence."  Hither  I  was  invited,  and 
here  I  paid  an  ever  memorable  visit.  The  house, 
as  Louis  was  careful  to  instruct  me,  was  entitled 
"  The  Cottage,  late  the  late  Miss  McGregor's,  Castle- 
ton  of  Braemar  " ;  and  thus  I  obediently  addressed  my 

T 


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letters  until  Louis  remarked  that  "the  reference  to  a 
deceased  Highland  lady,  tending  as  it  does  to  foster 
unavailing  sorrow,  may  be  with  advantage  omitted  from 
the  address." 

To  the  Cottage,  therefore,  heedless  of  the  manes  of 
the  late  Miss  McGregor,  I  proceeded  in  the  most  violent 
storm  of  hail  and  rain  that  even  Aberdeenshire  can 
produce  in  August,  and  found  Louis  as  frail  as  a  ghost, 
indeed,  but  better  than  I  expected.  >t  He  had  adopted  a 
trick  of  stretching  his  thin  limbs  over  the  back  of  a  wicker 
sofa,  which  gave  him  an  extraordinary  resemblance  to 
that  quaint  insect,  the  praying  mantis ;  but  it  was  a 
mercy  to  find  him  out  of  bed  at  all..  Among  the  many 
attractions  of  the  Cottage,  the  presence  of  Mr.  Thomas 
Stevenson — Louis's  father — must  not  be  omitted.  He 
was  then  a  singularly  charming  and  vigorous  personality, 
indignantly  hovering  at  the  borders  of  old  age  ("  Sixty- 
three,  sir,  this  3^ear ;  and,  deuce  take  it !  am  I  to  be 
called  '  an  old  gentleman  '  by  a  cab-driver  in  the  streets 
of  Aberdeen  ?  ")  and,  to  my  gratitude  and  delight,  my 
companion  in  long  morning  walks.  The  detestable 
weather  presently  brought  all  the  other  members  of  the 
household  to  their  beds,  and  Louis  in  particular  became 
a  wreck.  However,  it  was  a  wreck  that  floated  every 
day  at  nightfall ;  for  at  the  worst  he  was  able  to  come 
down-stairs  to  dinner  and  spend  the  evening  with  us. 

We  passed  the  days  with  regularity.  After  break- 
fast I  went  to  Louis's  bedroom,  where  he  sat  up  in  bed, 
•with  dark,  flashing  eyes  and  ruffled  hair,  and  we  played 
chess  on  the  coverlet.     Not  a  word  passed,  for  he  was 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  291 

strictly  forbidden  to  speak  in  the  early  part  of  the  day. 
As  soon  as  he  felt  tired — often  in  the  middle  of  a  game 
— he  would  rap  with  peremptory  knuckles  on  the  board 
as  a  signal  to  stop,  and  then  Mrs.  Stevenson  or  I  would 
arrange  his  writing  materials  on  the  bed.  Then  I  would 
see  no  more  of  him  till  dinner-time,  when  he  would  ap- 
pear, smiling  and  voluble,  the  horrid  bar  of  speechless- 
ness having  been  let  down.  Then  every  night,  after 
dinner,  he  would  read  us  what  he  had  written  during 
the  day.  I  find  in  a  note  to  my  wife,  dated  Septem- 
ber 3,  1 88 1  :  "Louis  has  been  writing,  all  the  time  I 
have  been  here,  a  novel  of  pirates  and  hidden  trea- 
sure, in  the  highest  degree  exciting.  He  reads  it  to  us 
every  night,  chapter  by  chapter."  This,  of  course,  was 
Treasure  Island^  about  the  composition  of  which,  long 
afterward,  in  Samoa,  he  wrote  an  account  in  some  parts 
of  which  I  think  that  his  memory  played  him  false.  I 
look  back  to  no  keener  intellectual  pleasure  than  those 
cold  nights  at  Braemar,  with  the  sleet  howling  outside, 
and  Louis  reading  his  budding  romance  by  the  lamp- 
light, emphasising  the  purpler  passages  with  hfted  voice 
and  gesticulating  finger. 


IV 

Hardly  had  I  left  the  Cottage  than  the  harsh  and 
damp  climate  of  Aberdeenshire  was  felt  to  be  rapidly 
destroying  Louis,  and  he  and  his  wife  fled  for  Davos. 
Before  the  end  of  October  they  were  ensconced  there  in 
a  fairly  comfortable  chalet.     Here  Louis  and  his  step- 


292  Critical  Kit-Kats 

son  amused  themselves  by  setting  up  a  hand-press, 
which  Mr.  Osbourne  worked,  and  for  which  Louis  pro- 
vided the  literary  material.  Four  or  five  laborious  little 
publications  were  put  forth,  some  of  them  illustrated  by 
the  daring  hand  of  Stevenson  himself.  He  complained 
to  me  that  Mr.  Osbourne  was  a  very  ungenerous  pul 
lisher — "  one  penny  a  cut,  and  one  halfpenny  a  set  « 
verses  !  What  do  you  say  to  that  for  Grub  Street  ? 
These  little  diversions  were  brought  to  a  close  by  the 
printer-publisher  breaking,  at  one  fell  swoop,  the 
press  and  his  own  finger.  The  little  "  Davos  Press  " 
issues  now  fetch  extravagant  prices,  which  would  have 
filled  author  and  printer  with  amazement.  About  this 
time  Louis  and  I  had  a  good  deal  of  correspondence 
about  a  work  which  he  had  proposed  that  we  should 
undertake  in  collaboration — a  retelling,  in  choice  literary 
form,  of  the  most  picturesque  murder  cases  of  the  last 
hundred  years.  We  were  to  visit  the  scenes  of  these 
crimes,  and  turn  over  the  evidence.  The  great  thing, 
Louis  said,  was  not  to  begin  to  write  until  we  were 
thoroughly  alarmed.  "  These  things  must  be  done, 
my  boy,  under  the  very  shudder  of  the  goose-flesh." 
We  were  to  begin  with  the  **  Story  of  the  Red  Barn," 
which  indeed  is  a  tale  pre-eminently  worthy  to  be 
retold  by  Stevenson.  But  the  scheme  never  came  off, 
and  is  another  of  the  dead  leaves  in  his  Vallombrosa. 

We  saw  him  in  London  again,  for  a  few  days,  in 
October  1882  ;  but  this  was  a  melancholy  period.  For 
eigut  months  at  the  close  of  that  year  and  the  beginning 
of  1883  he  was  capable  of  no  mental  exertion.     He  was 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  293 

in  the  depths  of  languor,  and  in  nightly  apprehension 
of  a  fresh  attack.  He  slept  excessively,  and  gave 
humorous  accounts  of  the  drowsiness  that  hung  upon 
him,  addressing  his  notes  as  "  from  the  Arms  of  Por- 
pus  "  (Morpheus)  and  "  at  the  Sign  of  the  Poppy." 
No  climate  seemed  to  relieve  him,  and  so,  in  the  autumn 
of  1882,  a  bold  experiment  was  tried.  As  the  snows  of 
Davos  were  of  no  avail,  the  hot,  damp  airs  of  Hyeres 
should  be  essayed.  I  am  inclined  to  dwell  in  some 
fulness  on  the  year  he  spent  at  Hyeres,  because, 
curiously  enough,  it  was  not  so  much  as  mentioned, 
to  my  knowledge,  by  any  of  the  writers  of  obituary 
notices  at  Sicvenson's  death.  It  takes,  neverthe- 
less, a  prominent  place  in  his  life's  history,  for  his 
removal  thither  marked  a  sudden  and  brilliant,  though 
only  temporary,  revival  in  his  health  and  spirits. 
Some  of  his  best  work,  too,  was  written  at  Hyeres,  and 
one  might  say  that  fame  first  found  him  in  this  warm 
corner  of  southern  France. 

The  house  at  Hyeres  was  called  "  La  Solitude."  It 
stood  in  a  paradise  of  roses  and  aloes,  fig-marigolds 
and  olives.  It  had  delectable  and  even,  so  Louis  de- 
clared, "  sub-celestial "  views  over  a  plain  bounded  by 
"  certain  mountains  as  graceful  as  Apollo,  as  severe  as 
Zeus " ;  and  at  first  the  hot  mistral,  which  blew  and 
burned  where  it  blew,  seemed  the  only  drawback. 
Not  a  few  of  the  best  poems  in  the  Underwoods  reflect 
the  ecstasy  of  convalescence  under  the  skies  and  per- 
fumes of  La  Solitude.  By  the  summer  Louis  could 
report  "  good  health  of  a  radiant  order/'     It  was  while 


294  Critical  Kit-Kats 

he  was  at  Hy^res  that  Stevenson  first  directly  addressed 
an  American  audience,  and  I  may  record  that,  in  Sep- 
tember 1883,  he  told  me  to  "  beg  Gilder  your  prettiest 
for  a  gentleman  in  pecuniary  sloughs."  Mr.  Gilder  was 
quite  alive  to  the  importance  of  securing  such  contri- 
butor, although  when  the  Amateur  Emigrant  ha  :ntered 
the  office  of  The  Century  Magazine  in  1879  he  aad  been 
very  civilly  but  coldly  shown  the  door.  (I  must  be 
allowed  to  tease  my  good  friends  in  Union  Square  by 
recording  that  fact !)  Mr.  Gilder  asked  for  fiction,  but 
received  instead  The  Silverado  Squatters,  which  duly 
appeared  in  the  magazine. 

It  was  also  arranged  that  Stevenson  should  make  an 
ascent  of  the  Rhone  for  The  Century,  and  Mr.  Joseph 
Pennell  was  to  accompany  him  to  make  sketches  for  the 
magazine.  But  Stevenson's  health  failed  again  :  the 
sudden  death  of  a  very  dear  old  friend  was  a  painful 
shock  to  him,  and  the  winter  of  that  year  was  not  pro- 
pitious. Abruptly,  however,  in  January  1884,  another 
crisis  came.  He  went  to  Nice,  where  he  was  thought 
to  be  dying.  He  saw  no  letters ;  all  his  business  was 
kindly  taken  charge  of  by  Mr.  Henley  ;  and  again,  for 
a  long  time,  he  passed  beneath  the  penumbra  of  steady 
languor  and  infirmity.  When  it  is  known  how  con- 
stantly he  sufiered,  how  brief  and  flickering  were  the 
intervals  of  comparative  health,  it  cannot  but  add  to  the 
impression  of  his  radiant  fortitude  through  all  these 
trials,  and  of  his  persistent  employment  of  all  his  lucid 
moments.  It  was  pitiful,  and  yet  at  the  same  time 
very  inspiriting,  to  see  a  creature  so  feeble  and  so  ill 


Robert  LduIs  Stevenson  295 

equipped  for  the  struggle  bear  himself  so  smilingly  and 
so  manfully  through  all  his  afflictions.  There  can  be 
no  doubt,  however,  that  this  latest  breakdown  vitally 
c.ffccted  his  spirits.  He  was  never,  after  this,  quite 
the  gay  child  of  genius  that  he  had  previously  been. 
Something  of  a  graver  cast  became  natural  to  his 
thoughts;  he  had  seen  Death  in  the  cave.  And  now 
for  the  first  time  we  traced  a  new  note  in  his  writings 
• — the  note  of  "  Pulvis  et  Umbra," 

After  1883  my  personal  memories  of  Stevenson  be- 
come very  casual.  In  November  1884,  he  was  settled 
at  Bournemouth,  in  a  villa  called  Bonaltie  Towers,  and 
there  he  stayed  until,  in  March  1885,  he  took  a  house 
of  his  own,  which,  in  pious  memory  of  his  grandfather, 
he  named  Skerryvore.  In  the  preceding  winter,  when 
I  was  going  to  America  to  lecture,  he  was  particularly 
anxious  that  I  should  lay  at  the  feet  of  Mr.  Frank  R. 
Stockton  his  homage,  couched  in  the  following  lines : 

My  Stockton  if  I  failed  to  like. 

It  were  a  sheer  depravity  ; 
For  I  went  down  with  the  "  Thomas  Hyke** 

J[f!d  up  with  the  "  Negative  Gravity.'* 

He  adored  these  tales  of  Mr.  Stockton's,  a  taste  which 
must  be  shared  by  all  good  men.  To  my  constant 
sorrow,  I  was  never  able  to  go  to  Bournemouth  during 
the  years  he  lived  there.  It  has  been  described  to  me, 
by  those  who  were  more  fortunate,  as  a  pleasure  that 
was  apt  to  tantalize  and  evade  the  visitor,  so  constantly 


296  Critical  Kit-Kats 

was  the  invalid  unable,  at  the  last,  to  see  the  friend 
who  had  travelled  a  hundred  miles  to  speak  with  him. 
It  was  therefore  during  his  visits  to  Lr  idon,  infrequent 
as  these  were,  that  we  saw  him  at  h  best,  for  these 
were  made  at  moments  of  unusual  ecovery.  He 
generally  lodged  at  what  he  called  the  "  Monument,"  this 
being  his  title  for  Mr.  Colvin's  house,  a  wing  of  the 
vast  structure  of  the  British  Tiluseum.  1  recall  an 
occasion  on  which  Louis  dined  with  us  (March  1886), 
because  of  the  startling  interest  in  the  art  of  strategy 
which  he  had  developed — an  interest  which  delayed  the 
meal  with  arrangements  of  serried  bottles  counter- 
scarped  and  lines  of  cruets  drawn  up  on  horseback 
ready  to  charge.  So  infectious  was  his  enthusiasm 
that  we  forgot  our  hunger,  and  hung  over  the  em- 
battled table-cloth,  easily  persuaded  to  agree  with  him 
that  neither  poetry  nor  the  plastic  arts  could  compete 
for  a  moment  with  "  the  finished  conduct,  sir,  of  a  large 
body  of  men  in  face  of  the  enemy." 

It  was  a  little  later  that  he  took  up  the  practice  of 
modelling  clay  figures  as  he  sat  up  in  bed.  Some  of 
these  compositions — which  needed,  perhaps,  his  elo- 
quent commentary  to  convey  their  full  effect  to  the 
-pectator — were  not  without  a  measure  of  skill  of  de- 
sta.-i.  I  recollect  his  saying,  with  extreme  gravity,  "  I 
interv'^  sculpture  what  Mr.  Watts  is  in  painting.  We 
impressh  of  us  pre-occupied  with  moral  and  abstract 
tnals,  ane  I  wonder  whether  any  one  has  preserved 
moments,  of  these  allegorical  groups  of  clay, 
very  inspir .  time  1  had  the  happiness  of  seeing  Steven- 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  297 

son  was  on  Sunday,  August  21,  1887.  He  had  been 
brought  up  from  Bournemouth  the  day  before  in  a 
wretched  condition  of  health,  and  was  lodged  in  a 
private  hotel  in  Finsbury  Circus,  in  the  Cit}',  ready  to 
be  easily  moved  to  a  steamer  in  the  Thames  on  the 
morrow.  I  was  warned,  in  a  note,  of  his  passage 
through  town,  and  of  the  uncertainty  whether  he  could 
be  seen.  On  the  chance,  I  went  over  early  on  the 
2 1st,  and,  very  happily  for  me,  he  had  had  a  fair 
night,  and  could  see  me  for  an  hour  or  two.  No  one 
else  but  Mrs.  Stevenson  was  with  him.  His  position 
was  one  which  might  have  daunted  any  man's  spirit, 
doomed  to  exile,  in  miserable  health,  starting  vaguely 
across  the  Atlantic,  with  all  his  domestic  interests 
rooted  up,  and  with  no  notion  where,  or  if  at  all,  they 
should  be  replanted.  If  ever  a  man  of  imagination 
could  be  excused  for  repining,  it  was  now. 

But  Louis  showed  no  white  feather.  He  was  radiantly 
humorous  and  romantic.  It  was  church  time,  and  there 
was  some  talk  of  my  witnessing  his  will,  which  I  could 
not  do,  because  there  could  be  found  no  other  reputable 
witness,  the  whole  crew  of  the  hotel  being  at  church. 
This  set  Louis  off  on  a  splendid  dream  of  romance. 
"  This,"  he  said,  "  is  the  way  in  which  our  valuable 
city  hotels — packed,  doubtless,  with  rich  objects  of 
jewellery — are  deserted  on  a  Sunday  morning.  Some 
bold  piratical  fellow,  defying  the  spirit  of  Sabbata- 
rianism, might  make  a  handsome  revenue  by  sacking 
the  derelict  hotels  between  the  hours  of  ten  and 
tv.'elve.     One  hotel  a  week  would  suffice  to  enable  such 


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a  man  to  ire  into  private  life  within  the  space  of  a 
year.  A  n  jk  might,  perhaps,  be  worn  for  the  mere 
fancy  of  the  thing,  and  to  terrify  kitchen-maids,  but 
no  real  disguise  would  be  needful  to  an  enterprise 
that  would  require  nothing  but  a  brave  heart  and  a 
careful  study  of  the  City  Postal  Director3\"  He 
spoke  of  the  matter  with  so  much  fire  and  gallantry 
that  I  blushed  for  the  youth  of  England  and  its  lack 
of  manly  enterprise.  No  one  ever  could  describe 
preposterous  conduct  with  such  a  convincing  air  as 
Louis  could.  Common  sense  was  positively  humbled 
in  his  presence. 

The  volume  of  his  poems  called  Underwoods  had  just 
appeared,  and  he  inscribed  a  cop}'^  of  it  to  me  in  the 
words  "  at  Todgers',  as  ever  was,  chez  Todgers,  Peck- 
sniff street."  The  only  new  book  he  seemed  to  wish 
to  carry  away  with  him  was  Mr.  Hardy's  beautiful 
romance,  Tlie  Woodlandcrs,  which  we  had  to  scour 
London  that  Sunday  afternoon  to  get  hold  of.  In  the 
evening  Mr.  Colvin  and  I  each  returned  to  "  Todgers' '' 
with  the  three  volumes,  borrowed  or  stolen  somewhere, 
and  wrapped  up  for  the  voyage  next  day.  And  so  the 
following  morning,  in  an  extraordinary  vessel  called  the 
Liidgate  Hiil—z.s  though  in  compliment  to  Mr.  Stock- 
ton's genius — and  carrying,  besides  the  Stevensons, 
a  cargo  of  stallions  and  monkeys,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Steven- 
son and  Mr.  Lloyd  Osbourne  steamed  down  the  Thames 
in  search  of  health  across  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific. 
The  horses,  Louis  declared,  protruded  their  noses  in  an 
unmannerly    v*ay   between  the  passengers  at  dinner, 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  299 

and  the  poor  little  grey  monkeys,  giving  up  life  for  a 
bad  job  on  board  that  strange,  heaving  cage,  died  by 
dozens,  and  were  flung  contemptuously  out  into  the 
ocean.  The  strangest  vo3'age,  however,  some  time 
comes  to  an  end,  and  Louis  landed  in  America.  He 
was  never  to  cross  the  Atlantic  again ;  and  for  those 
who  loved  him  in  Europe  he  had  already  journeyed 
more  than  half-way  to  another  world. 


It  is  impossible  to  deal,  however  lightly,  with  the 
personal  qualities  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  without 
dwelling  on  the  extreme  beauty  of  his  character.  In 
looking  back  over  the  twenty  years  in  which  I  knew 
him,  Ifeel  that,  since  he  was  eminently  human,  I  ought 
to  recall  his  faults,  but  I  protest  that  I  can  remember 
none.  Perhaps  the  nearest  approach  to  a  fault  was  a 
certain  want  of  discretion,  always  founded  on  a  wish  to 
make  people  understand  each  other,  but  not  exactly 
according  to  wisdom.  I  recollect  that  he  once  em- 
broiled me  for  a  moment  with  John  Addington  Symonds 
in  a  manner  altogether  bloodthirsty  and  ridiculous,  so 
that  we  both  fell  upon  him  and  rended  him.  This 
little  weakness  is  really  the  blackest  crime  I  can  lay  to 
his  charge.  And  on  the  other  side,  what  courage,  what 
love,  what  an  indomitable  spirit,  what  a  melting  pity ! 
He  had  none  of  the  sordid  errors  of  the  little,  man 
who  writes — no  sick  ambition,  no  envy  of  others,  no 
exaggeration  of  the  value  of   this  ephemeral  trick  of 


300  Critical  Kit-Kats 

scribbling.  He  was  eager  to  help  his  fellows,  ready  to 
take  a  second  place,  with  great  difficulty  offended,  by 
the  least  show  of  repentance  perfectly  appeased. 

Quite  early  in  his  career  he  adjusted  himself  to  the 
inevitable  sense  of  physical  failure.  He  threw  away 
from  him  all  the  useless  impediments  :  he  sat  loosely 
in  the  saddle  of  life.  Many  men  who  get  such  a  warn- 
ing as  he  got  take  up.  something  to  lean  against; 
according  to  their  education  or  temperament,  they 
support  their  maimed  existence  on  religion,  or  on 
cynical  indifference,  or  on  some  mania  of  the  collector 
or  the  dilettante.  Stevenson  did  none  of  these  things. 
He  determined  to  make  the  sanest  and  most  genial  use 
of  so  much  of  life  as  was  left  him.  As  any  one  who 
reads  his  books  can  see,  he  had  a  deep  strain  of 
natural  religion  ;  but  he  kept  it  to  himself;  he  made  no 
hysterical  or  ostentatious  use  of  it. 

Looking  back  at  the  past,  one  recalls  a  trait  that  had 
its  significance,  though  one  missed  its  meaning  then. 
He  was  careful,  as  I  have  hardly  knovv^n  any  other  man 
to  be,  not  to  allow  himself  to  be  burdened  by  the 
weight  of  material  things.  It  was  quite  a  jest  with  us 
that  he  never  acquired  any  possessions.  In  the  midst 
of  those  who  produced  books,  pictures,  prints,  bric-^- 
brac,  none  of  these  things  ever  stuck  to  Stevenson. 
There  are  some  deep-sea  creatures,  the  early  part  of 
whose  life  is  spent  dancing  through  the  waters ;  at 
length  some  sucker  or  tentacle  touches  a  rock,  adheres, 
pulls  down  more  tentacles,  until  the  creature  is  caught 
there,   stationary  for  the  remainder   of  its  existence. 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  301 

So  it  happens  to  men,  and  Stevenson's  friends,  one 
after  another,  caught  the  ground  with  a  house,  a  fixed 
employment,  a  "stake  in  life;"  he  alone  kept  dancing 
in  the  free  element,  unattached.  I  remember  his  say- 
ing to  me  that  if  ever  he  had  a  garden  he  should  like  it 
to  be  empty,  just  a  space  to  walk  and  talk  in,  with  no 
flowers  to  need  a  gardener  nor  fine  lawns  that  had  to 
be  mown.  Just  a  fragment  of  the  bare  world  to  move 
in,  that  was  all  Stevenson  asked  for.  And  we  who 
gathered  possessions  around  us — a  little  library  of  rare 
books,  a  little  gallery  of  drawings  or  bronzes — he 
mocked  us  with  his  goblin  laughter  ;  it  was  only  so 
much  more  luggage  to  carry  on  the  march,  he  sr.fd^  so 
much  more  to  strain  the  arms  and  bend  the  back. 

Stevenson  thought,  as  we  all  must  think,  that  litera- 
ture is  a  delightful  profession,  a  primrose  path.  I 
remember  his  once  saying  so  to  me,  and  then  he 
turned,  with  the  brimming  look  in  his  lustrous  eyes 
and  the  tremulous  smile  on  his  lips,  and  added,  "  But 
it  is  not  all  primroses,  some  of  it  is  brambly,  and  most 
of  it  uphill."  He  knew — no  one  better — how  the  hill 
catches  the  breath  and  how  the  brambles  tear  the  face 
and  hands  ;  but  he  pushed  strenuously,  serenely  on, 
searching  for  new  paths,  struggling  to  get  up  into  the 
light  and  air. 

One  reason  why  it  was  difficult  to  be  certain  that 
Stevenson  had  reached  his  utmost  in  any  direction  was 
what  I  will  call,  for  want  of  a  better  phrase,  the 
energetic  modesty  of  his  nature.  He  was  never  satisfied 
with   himself,   yet  never  cast  down.      There  are  two 


302 


Critical  Kit-Kats 


dangers  that  beset  the  artist — the  one  is  being  pleased 
with  what  he  has  done,  and  the  other  being  dejected 
with  it.  Stevenson,  more  than  any  other  man  whom  I 
have  known,  steered  the  middle  course.  He  never 
conceived  that  he  had  achieved  a  great  success,  but  he 
never  lost  hope  that  by  taking  pains  he  might  yet  do 
so.  Twelve  years  ago,  when  he  was  beginning  to 
write  that  curious  and  fascinating  book,  Prince  Otto^ 
he  wrote  to  me  describing  the  mood  in  which  one 
should  go  about  one's  work — golden  words,  which  I 
have  never  forgotten.  "  One  should  strain,"  he  said, 
"and  then  play,  strain  again,  and  play  again.  The 
stnir.  is  for  us,  it  educates  ;  the  play  is  for  the  reader, 
and  pleases.  In  moments  of  effort  one  learns  to  do  the 
easy  things  that  people  like." 

He  learned  that  which  he  desired,  and  he  gained  more 
than  he  hoped  for.  ^  He  became  the  most  exquisite 
English  writer  of  his  generation ;  yet  those  who  lived 
close  to  him  are  apt  to  think  less  of  this  than  of  the 
fact  that  he  was  the  most  unselfish  and  the  most  lov- 
able of  human  beings. 

1895. 


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